


a song will only scratch the skin

by Hibou_Gris



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/F, F/M, I'm here to write happy endings and chew gum, M/M, Multi, Music, Mythology - Freeform, Orpheus and Eurydice Remix, References to Alcoholism / Drug Addiction, References to Depression, References to Suicide, Romance, The Magicians Season 4 Ending Fix-It, alternate season 5, and I'm all out of gum
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2020-06-30 11:15:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 83,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19852012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hibou_Gris/pseuds/Hibou_Gris
Summary: She stops, nailing Julia with an iron stare, a High King stare. “This is fucked up, you know that, right? This is fucked up, and it is actively fucking us up, because Quentin is dead and gone and the longer we spend trying to bring him back and failing, the harder it gets to actually deal with it.”Julia takes a breath. Counts -1, 2, 3; lets it out. “I’m not giving up yet.”





	1. Truth and Dare

Spring in upstate New York is just an extension of winter: it’s an afternoon in early April when Julia finally manages to get everyone in the same place at the same time - standing outside the Physical Kids Cottage - and there are still clumps of snow clinging stubbornly to the ground, and an icy wind whipping around the corner of the Cottage and freezing Julia’s fingers and the tips of her ears. 

(Everyone, in this case, means Julia and Penny, and Kady and Alice, and Eliot and Margo. Everyone who isn’t dead, or missing.)

Penny stands just behind her left shoulder, but he doesn’t touch her. They’re still not - touching much, these days. He knows what she’s going to say, and he doesn’t approve, thinks that they should have approached Alice in private first, but she knows he’ll back her up anyway.

Kady and Alice are sitting huddled on the wooden bench, sipping their coffee. They’d come together, and they’re sitting close, still in the middle of an argument about universal access to Library cards. Alice’s knee keeps bumping against Kady’s whenever she leans forward, but neither of them seem to notice. Alice had disappeared for a while, gone completely off the grid, and Julia had been worried, distantly, from within the dark well of her own grief, had thought about Alice 23, her hopeless eyes, her wooden fingers. But then again - that Alice had been younger, had never been a Niffin. This Alice, their Alice, had reappeared when the Library came calling with a job offer, and as far as Julia can tell, has thrown herself into her new position wholeheartedly. She still wears her usual dresses, though, instead of Librarian gray, and she and Kady have become a united and unstoppable force in the Forum meetings. They look comfortable, easy with each other in a way Julia misses, and she looks away.

Eliot has his arm around Margo’s shoulders, and she’s leaning hard into him, shivering a little. ( _Sotto voce_ , two minutes ago: Eliot - “take my coat,” Margo - “you know it wouldn’t work with this outfit,” Eliot - “we could go inside,” Margo - “shut the fuck up,” and Eliot had reached out and pulled her close. Eliot never goes inside the Cottage anymore, not if he can help it.) They both look brittle, and older, since - well, since last fall, since the desert and the Monster and the infirmary where Julia had sat in an uncomfortable chair next to Margo, waiting for Eliot to get out of surgery, and they had both looked up when Penny appeared and said, blankly, “Quentin’s dead.” Since then. But they look even worse since they got back from Fillory - Josh and Fen MIA, three centuries gone by and a new mysterious evil ruler all they had to show for it. 

If only it weren’t so fucking cold - maybe they should find a empty lab, or classroom, but superstitiously, Julia wants to have this conversation somewhere neutral. Somewhere that doesn’t belong to Brakebills, or to anyone else. She is, technically speaking, a student at Brakebills now - thank you, Kimber D’Antoni; technically speaking, they all are - reinstatement at Brakebills for formerly banned magicians was part of the truce between the Library, Brakebills and the other magical institutions, and the hedges (and those formerly banned magicians who snobbishly refused to refer to themselves as hedges). She and Penny have been using the Cottage as a home base for the last few months, mainly because it was convenient to be close to Brakebills’ resources, but neither of them have actually attended any classes. The other students in the Cottage tend to give them a wide berth - their combined weirdness (Julia: formerly the Squib first year, now revealed as a hedge witch/ex-goddess; Penny: post-apocalyptic alternate timeline survivor version of a dead classmate) seems to be too high for even Brakebills’ standards. Julia can’t really bring herself to give a shit about any of it. She reaches into the pocket of her jacket, touches the deck of cards tucked inside. There’s only one thing that matters right now.

Better not to move, better not to put this off any longer. Julia casts a small shield spell instead, to act as a wind-break, and takes a deep breath. “I need to tell you something.”

They all turn to look at her; behind her, she hears Penny shift, bracing himself.

Julia says, “I found a spell to bring Q back.”

There’s a short, shocked pause, and then Margo says, “The fuck you say,” at the same time that Kady says, “What the hell, Julia,” as she jumps up from the bench, letting her coffee drop to the ground.

Alice reaches down, puts her own coffee cup carefully on the patio stones and rights Kady’s, before rising to her feet as well. Her face has gone very pale. “I thought we decided we were done with this. Penny said Quentin isn’t in the Underworld anymore.” 

Eliot doesn’t say anything, but he looks at Julia like she’s just stepped in close and slid a knife between his ribs.

Penny moves forward to stand beside Julia, says, “The other Penny told Hyman that Quentin isn’t in the Underworld way-station anymore, that he’s already moved on. But that doesn’t mean that we’ve got no options.”

Julia wants to lean into him, wants to hold his hand; doesn’t. “He didn’t want us wasting our time trying something like what we did with Alice -”

“So what’s changed?” Margo asks. Eliot’s arm has fallen away from her shoulders, but she reaches back without looking to grab at him, tangle her fingers into the front of his coat, and Eliot lets her.

“This spell is different,” Julia says. “It doesn’t matter where he is, it doesn’t matter if he’s - somewhere else -”

“Somewhere else,” Kady repeats, and Julia grits her teeth and says, “Somewhere else in the afterlife, I don’t know how it works -”

“No, you don’t,” Alice says, ice cold. “You don’t know how it works, we don’t know how it works, but you still want to fuck around with necromancy and - and drag Q back from who the fuck knows where -”

“No one’s getting dragged anywhere,” Julia says, trying to keep her voice level. “Just let me -”

“Do you have any idea what it was like -” Alice stops mid-sentence; she’s breathing too fast. Kady puts a hand on her shoulder. Alice takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, and stares hard at Julia. “What if we bring him back, and he hates us for it?”

Julia tries not to flinch, but Alice’s eyes are - Julia meets her stare for stare, pain for pain. She can’t look away. Alice is the one she needs to convince.

Eliot says, “I mean, we all saw season six of Buffy, right? If Q is - if he’s at peace,” he stumbles over the words, staring at the ground, “then we can’t yank him back here just because we -” 

He stops, swallowing, and Margo glances at him sideways and says, “And what if we bring him back and he’s a serial killer, like in the darkest timeline?” She waves a hand at Penny, who rolls his eyes. “We talked about this the last time. We can’t risk it unless we’re sure that we’re not in for some kind of Monkey’s Paw horror show -”

“Bambi,” Eliot says, bringing his hand up to cover his eyes, and Margo cuts herself off, biting her lip.

“It’s not that kind of spell,” Julia says.

“Then what kind of spell is it, exactly?” Kady’s sharp, as always - she knows there’s something Julia’s not saying.

“There’s an ingredient I’m missing. Just one - I have everything else we need.” Julia wraps her arms around herself, rubs her upper arms. “But the spell requires a piece of - the body. It literally translates to the person’s flesh or blood, so hair or fingernails wouldn’t be enough.”

“You need his corpse,” Alice says. She sounds hollow, emptied out. “Didn’t Penny tell you? There was nothing left. He - there’s nothing left.”

Eliot flinches. Kady watches Alice with wide worried eyes. Even Margo looks away, her jaw clenching hard. 

Penny takes a small step forward, moving closer to Alice. “Julia and I went back to the Mirror World, tried to find the room,” he says quietly. “But we couldn’t - that place is a fucking maze, everything looks the same -”

“If you could take us to the room where he died,” Julia says, “then maybe -”

“Maybe what? Maybe we could scrape his fucking ashes up off the ground?” Alice says. She pushes her hair back behind one ear; her hand is shaking. “I can’t - I can’t believe this.”

“Alice -” Julia starts, the familiar hard press of tears closing her throat, and she tries to swallow it away.

Kady says, “What kind of spell is it, Julia?”

Julia looks at her, and Kady stares back, implacable. Okay, time to lay the cards on the table.

“It opens a door to the Underworld,” Julia says. “And - it calls forth the ruler of the Underworld, so that you can petition him -” 

“And there it is,” Kady says. “It’s not a spell, it’s a fucking - you want to summon a god.” She points at Julia, her voice rising unsteadily. “ _You_ actually want to summon a god. Are you _fucking_ kidding me?” 

Julia feels her hands spasm into fists, and she forces her fingers to relax. “It’s not a summoning, we’re not calling him to Earth. It opens a door -”

“So that we can stroll into his front hall and ask for a favor on his own turf instead? Yeah, I’m really seeing the distinction, that sounds so much less likely to go horribly wrong,” Kady says. “Come the fuck on!”

“Hey, take it easy -” Penny says, but Kady turns on him rattlesnake-quick. 

“No - no, you shut up. You weren’t here, you don’t know.”

Alice says, “Julia - we can’t do this,” and her voice isn’t loud but everything seems to go still as she speaks. Even the wind whistling through the bare tree branches fades out, but Julia’s own breathing is harsh in her ears, her hands are tingling and something furious and wounded is rising up inside of her, tightening her chest. There’s a hum in the air, a far-off rumble of thunder in the distance.

“I want him back too,” Alice says, quiet, and hard as steel. “You know - you _know_ I want him back. But this is crazy.”

“He would do it for you,” Julia says, and she knows it’s the wrong thing before she says it, as she says it, but she says it anyway because it’s _fucking_ true and they all know it. 

Alice’s face twists with anger, but her eyes go bright and wet behind her glasses. She says, “Fuck you,” and spins away, striding across the snow and mud-covered lawn back towards the main part of campus.

Kady follows her, after shooting one more hard, unimpressed look Julia’s way.

“Shit,” Penny mutters. 

Julia doesn’t watch them go. She stares at the ground, breathes in through her nose - _1, 2, 3_ \- and out through her mouth - _1, 2, 3_ \- until she’s pretty sure she can talk without screaming, or crying, or - 

“You good?” Penny asks; he’s hovering next to her, his hand frozen halfway to her arm. 

“Yeah,” Julia says. She blinks a couple of times, wipes her hand over her eyes, and looks up at Margo and Eliot. Margo looks a little sympathetic and a lot skeptical; Eliot’s expression is harder to read - torn, maybe.

“It won’t be like Buffy season six,” Julia says. “The spell opens the door to the Underworld so that we can petition Hades to let the dead - to let Quentin come back to Earth. But he would have to actually follow us back. It would be up to him, in the end.”

“Sounds like it would be up to Hades first,” Margo says. “And relying on the kindness of strange gods has been a terrible fucking idea, historically speaking.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Julia says, razor-sharp. “I _know_. But Q deserves - he deserves a chance to live his fucking life. And I’m going to do everything in my power at least give him the option to come back.”

Margo’s mouth turns downwards, and Eliot tugs her hand gently off of his coat so that he can hold it in his own, lacing their fingers together. 

“So what’s the catch?” Eliot asks. His voice is so hoarse that Julia’s throat aches in sympathy. “It’s not like there’s ever a shortage of people dying, so why haven’t we heard of this before?”

Julia rubs at her arm - she can tell Penny is looking at her sideways, but she doesn’t look back. She says, “The ingredients are rare, and the petition can only be made within a certain time limit, on behalf of someone who died an unnatural death. And - the spell has never worked, in recorded history.” 

Margo makes a harsh sound. “Right. Of course not. Because this is a fucking pipe dream -”

“No,” Julia says, “that’s the thing, it’s _not_. Everything’s different now - the amount of ambient magic is off the charts -”

“Literally,” Penny says, grimly. “They’ve been trying to make new charts, to measure it properly.” It’s also been causing havoc with any long-term supposedly stable spells, the Brakebills weather-control set-up among them.

Julia says, “There’s magic being done that was totally impossible before - ancient spells, complex theoretical magic that no one had the juice for, not unless you somehow had a dozen of Mayakovsky’s batteries on hand - did you hear that a first year reanimated their cat?”

Eliot grimaces. ”Didn’t they have to take that cat out with a shotgun?”

“You really think bringing up Pet Sematary redux is a good idea in the context of this conversation?” Margo says.

Julia waves that away. “The point is that it was a _first year_ who pulled off a spell like that.” The first years are, in actual fact, terrifying. The ones who had survived the Goose Incident had, rather than become timid or cautious, turned into nihilistic maniacs when it came to dangerous and experimental magic. Todd is at the centre of Brakebills’ gossip network, and from what he’s told Julia, it’s only through sheer dumb luck that Brakebills is still standing. 

“We can do this,” Julia says, looking back and forth between Margo and Eliot. “This could work. We just need to convince Alice to take us to the right room in the Mirror World.”

Penny’s hand brushes against her wrist, the smallest fraction of a touch. “Julia’s right.”

Margo and Eliot exchange a long, indecipherable look. 

Eventually, Eliot nods, his gaze drifting away, and Margo says, “Okay. That’s a tentative okay, just so you understand, because this still sounds like the longest of long shots, and I know we specialize in those, but -” 

She stops, nailing Julia with an iron stare, a High King stare. “This is fucked up, you know that, right? This is fucked up, and it is actively fucking us up, because Quentin is dead and gone and the longer we spend trying to bring him back and failing, the harder it gets to actually deal with it.”

Julia takes a breath. Counts - _1, 2, 3_ ; lets it out. “I’m not giving up yet.”

“Yeah,” Margo says. “Neither are we. Like I said, you’ve got a tentative okay. Let Alice cool down first, then we’ll try again, and get her to listen this time instead of pissing her off.”

“Okay, yeah, that’s on me,” Julia says.

“You know where to find us,” Margo says. 

She waits for Eliot to grab his cane from where he’d left it leaning against the patio’s low wall, before linking her arm with his and starting back towards the main campus; the two of them are staying in one of the now-vacant first-year dorm rooms since the Cottage isn’t an option. Eliot gives Julia and Penny a quick nod - his eyes are dark and strained, and Julia nods back and watches worriedly as he and Margo navigate the icy, muddy ground. Eliot’s moving easier now, only uses the cane for long distances, but - 

Julia pushes down on her anxiety, hates how the world seems like a endless teetering walk over a chasm, waiting to swallow her friends the way it - the way it swallowed Quentin. “Okay,” she says under her breath, “okay, okay.”

They’re going to do this. They’re going to get him back.

*

“Could’ve gone worse,” Penny says. Julia’s facing away from him, watching Margo and Eliot leave. She looks cold, tucking her hands up into the sleeves of her jacket and starting to shiver a little. He wants to warm her up, step in close, fold her hands between his own. He doesn’t move.

“Yeah,” Julia says. “I shouldn’t have said that to Alice.”

Penny shrugs. “No, probably not.”

Julia turns around, raises a wry eyebrow. 

“We’ll talk to her,” Penny says. “And she’ll listen, because she’s Alice and she always wants all the information before she makes a decision.” He doesn’t say: she loved Quentin, she’s grieving, she’s not the enemy - because Julia knows. They’ve all spent the last five months catching sharply on each other’s jagged edges, despite their best intentions. 

“But what if her decision is ‘no’?” Julia says softly.

“Then we’ll go back to searching the Mirror World ourselves,” Penny says, with more confidence than he really feels about that particular plan.

Julia chews on her lip, half-turns away from him to undo the shield spell that she’d put on the patio. “We don’t have time for that. You’re sure you can’t remember where the room is?”

Penny’s stomach drops - this again, _fuck_. “I’m sure. If I remembered where it was, I would take you there.”

Julia doesn’t say anything, just lets her hands fall to her sides as the shield spell vanishes and the wind slams into them again, sending Julia’s hair flying around her face. 

Penny swallows, grips his hands in the fabric of his shirt so that he doesn’t reach for her. She’s not his Julia. He should know that by now, but his body still forgets sometimes. “Julia, I wouldn’t lie to you. I need you to believe me on this.”

“You don’t think the spell’s going to work,” Julia says, still not looking at him. “You think it’s too dangerous.”

“It is dangerous, and I don’t know if it’s going to work, and neither do you,” Penny says. “But I’m going to help you anyway, because -”

He stops himself from saying it. _Because I love you._ “Because that’s what you want. I’m not going to fucking sabotage you.”

Julia finally meets his eyes, gives him a long searching look. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Penny says. He’s still not sure if she believes him; Julia’s psychic wards almost never falter.

“I’m going to go check on the - thing,” Julia says. “See you at dinner?”

“Sure,” Penny says, and watches as she walks away, disappearing around the corner of the Cottage.

He used to play truth or dare with his Julia. (He still thinks her as _his_ Julia, because the Julia that is here now is - she’s alive, she’s in front of him, he loves her and he can’t think of her as anything other than ‘Julia’, had never been able to think of her as ‘Julia 40’, the way he had thought resentfully of the others as ‘Josh 40’, ‘Quentin 40’, etc., because fuck that ‘Penny 23’ noise - but she’s not his Julia.) 

It had been a joke, mostly, the kind of dumb game that people played when they were stupid in love and everything that the other person said and did was adorable.

_“Truth.”_

_“Death is not an option: Fogg or Mayakovsky?”_

_“Fogg, straight up, no contest. Come on, Jules, are you even trying? Give me a challenge. Truth or dare?”_

_“Dare.”_

_“Huh. I dare you to kiss me.”_

_“Oh, I’m the one who’s not even trying?”_

_“Come on, like you mean it. Like I’m going off to war.”_

_“I do mean it.”_

_“I know. I know you do.”_

Sometimes it had been serious. He had said ‘truth’, and Julia had asked him about Traveling, about his mother, about the voice that had been in his head all his life, the Beast’s voice, after he had finally told her about it. He had asked her about her terrible family, about her ex-fiancé, about the way she saw magic as an endlessly unfolding puzzle, a marvel and a delight, so different from his own experience.

Penny had said ‘dare’ and Julia had said, “I dare you to come to Fillory with us.”

He had snorted. “Of course I’m coming with you. You think I’m leaving it up to Alice and Quentin to watch your back?”

He might as well have stayed behind, for all the good he’d done her.

This Julia, here and now Julia, Julia-who-is-alive - he’s never told her about that game. The Binder had said ‘Human or goddess?’ and Penny had said ‘human’, and now every time Julia looks at him, he can see the weight of that decision behind her eyes, in the careful distance she keeps between them.

Julia says, ‘”Tell me where the room is in the Mirror World,” and he tells her the truth, that he can’t remember. Julia says, “I’m about to lose my shit, take me somewhere with no people,” and he takes her a beach in Alaska, and she stands on the shore and screams and screams into the ocean waves, and the trees behind them shiver and crack. Julia says, “Help me get the ingredients for this spell,” and he does, even though he’s half sure that it will never work, just like all the other things they’ve tried.

Julia watches him, and doesn’t touch him, and Penny can’t read her mind but he can make a solid guess as to what she’s thinking: _you stole my choice. How can I ever trust you?_

He doesn’t blame her. He can’t take it back, can’t fix it, so instead he answers her questions, does what she asks, and thinks, _alive, you’re alive, alive and here_ , and that has to be enough. 

A gust of wind shoves him sideways, and Penny sticks his hands in his pockets, wishes for a cigarette. Julia’s probably in her room by now, so he starts to head back inside the Cottage, but then he catches sight of Eliot’s tall black-clad figure coming back up the pathway towards him. 

“Hey man,” Penny says, a little warily. He still doesn’t know Eliot that well - Eliot’s spent a lot of time either in Fillory, or possessed, or recovering from being stabbed while possessed. He’d barely known Eliot in his own timeline, so he’s got no basis for comparison either. Right now Eliot looks - twitchy.

“Do you think the spell will work?” Eliot says, with no preamble.

“Look, like Julia said -” Penny says, but Eliot interrupts him.

“Julia wants the spell to work so badly that -” Eliot stops, tightens his hand hard around his cane, his knuckles turning white. _Julia’s not the only one_ , Penny thinks, with a pang of sympathy. “I’m asking _you_. Do you think it will work?”

“Honestly? I don’t know,” Penny says. “I saw what happened to Quentin, okay? Even if we find the right room, there’s - not going to be much to work with.” 

Eliot closes his eyes for a second, then opens them again. “What if we had all the ingredients? What about then?”

“What are you talking about?” Penny says, pulling his hands out of his pockets.

“Just tell me yes or no.”

Penny narrows his eyes at him. “Maybe. If we had all the ingredients, and we had Alice to help us cast it, then yeah, maybe it’ll work.”

“Maybe,” Eliot says, his face tightening.

“It’s a spell that’s never worked for as far back as anyone can remember, I’m not making any fucking promises,” Penny says.

“Right. Right, why the fuck not?” Eliot says, half to himself. He squares his shoulders and looks straight at Penny, all of his uncertainty dropping away. “I need you to do me a favor. I need you to take me to Fillory.”

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from "Storm Coming" by Gnarls Barkley.
> 
> Inspired by:
> 
> _"So, we have to keep it very - best episode of Buffy."_
> 
> _"The musical?"_
> 
> _"The other one."_
> 
> Because why not both?
> 
> And because I want a better ending.


	2. The Importance of Body Language

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She stops, nailing Julia with an iron stare, a High King stare. “This is fucked up, you know that, right? This is fucked up, and it is actively fucking us up, because Quentin is dead and gone and the longer we spend trying to bring him back and failing, the harder it gets to actually deal with it.”
> 
> Julia takes a breath. Counts - _1, 2, 3_ ; lets it out. “I’m not giving up yet.”

_Now_

Kady catches up with Alice on the path back to the main campus, coming up along aside her and matching her frantic pace.

“Hey, you okay?” Kady says.

“That’s a stupid question,” Alice snaps, not slowing down. 

“No shit, but I’m asking it anyway,” Kady says, low and calm as she can manage; she’s still thrumming with adrenaline, she can’t believe that Julia would - “You know you’re bleeding magic?” She’s looking down at the ground where Alice’s shoes are, impossibly, making sparks every time they hit the muddy pathway. Alice looks down too, and stops abruptly.

“Fuck,” Alice says, staring at her feet. The sparks have disappeared along with her forward motion, but now there are glimmers of light floating near her curled fists, and up around her tear-streaked face. 

“Better cast something quick,” Kady says. It used to take years for a magical charge like that to build up, but with the levels of ambient magic what they are, now it only takes hours - or sometimes minutes, if emotions are running high enough.

Alice doesn’t answer, just raises her hands and launches into a spell, her fingers still moving smoothly and elegantly despite everything. She finishes the final tut, and the air around them is suddenly full of small, blinking lights, like indigo fireflies, and the free floating glimmers near Alice’s face and hands are gone. 

Kady reaches out to touch one of the fireflies, and her fingers light up purple as they pass through it. 

“Phosphoromancy,” Alice says. “Bent light. There’s nothing really there.” She’s staring straight ahead, not looking at Kady or the lights. 

“Light isn’t nothing,” Kady says.

Alice snorts, and takes her glasses off to wipe at her face with her sleeve. “Spare me the comforting bullshit. It’s not your style.” 

Kady blinks, stung, but Alice isn’t looking at her. “Fine, whatever.” She steps closer and runs her hand down Alice’s arm, stopping at the delicate skin on the inside of Alice’s wrist, just past the cuff of her sleeve. “Come back to my place.”

Alice lifts her head, looks at her sharply - her face always seems so bare when she’s not wearing her glasses (one less thing for Alice Quinn to hide behind, Kady thinks, and secretly kinda likes it.) 

Kady leans in. “Is that more my style?”

The side of Alice’s mouth tilts up, just a fraction. “Yes.” 

Kady doesn’t bother asking which question she’s replying to.

They take the Brakebills-NYC portal that’s opens out to midtown, since it’s closer than the nearest Library travel-point. They don’t talk much, but by wordless agreement they’re practically double-timing it down the sidewalk, weaving in and out of the rush hour crowds and the slower moving tourist herds.

At the loft, Kady does a quick ward-check as they’re taking off their coats and shoes - everything looks good, no one in or out since she left, which means: “We’ve got the place to ourselves for once,” she calls over her shoulder to Alice, as she heads towards the kitchen. “You want a drink?”

“I want -” Alice catches her by the wrist, pulls her back around so that they’re facing each other. “I don’t want a fucking drink.”

Kady grins and let herself be pulled, stumbles into her, playing it up - she grabs Alice’s arms just above the elbows, and Alice reaches out to catch her automatically, taking her weight. They’re pressed together, clutching at each other, Alice’s hair swinging forward to brush against Kady’s cheek as Kady bends towards her.

“Then what do you want?” 

“I want you to fuck me,” Alice says, “ _obviously_ ,” and Kady loves when Alice gets like this, pushy and demanding and completely unselfconscious about it.

“I know, but I like to hear you say it,” Kady says, tilting her head to breathe it against Alice’s ear. Alice makes an angry huffing sound then twists around and kisses her, hard, and Kady kisses her back, hungry for it. After a few seconds, she pulls away, laughing at Alice’s frustrated glare, and starts to push Alice backwards in the direction of the couch.

_Then_

The first time they’d fucked had been five days after Quentin died. Alice had spent almost the entirety of those five days closed up in her bedroom in the loft, not talking to anyone and barely eating or drinking. On the evening of the fifth day, she’d emerged and taken a shower, which Kady figured was a good sign, so after Pete and the other hedges had left for the night she had gone to Alice’s room with a tray full of leftover Thai food. 

Alice was curled up on top of the bed, wearing pyjamas, her back to Kady. Her hair was combed but still wet, and the lights were off. She didn’t move when Kady came in, or reply when Kady said, “Brought you some dinner.”

Kady sighed, put the tray down on the dresser, and then lay down on the bed next to Alice, close but not touching her. “I’m sorry,” she said. Alice sniffed but didn’t say anything. Kady closed her eyes and tried not to think about Penny, the way his body had looked, gray and so still, stretched out on the bed. 

They stayed like that for a long time, long enough that Kady fell asleep without meaning to. When she woke up, Alice had turned so that they were facing each other - she was watching Kady, her expression strange, unreadable. A piece of her hair was falling forward onto her face, half covering one eye.

“Hey,” Kady said, and without thinking, still half-asleep, she reached out and smoothed Alice’s hair back into place. Alice sucked in a quick breath through her nose, and then leaned in and kissed her. For a moment, it was just the lightest touch, her lips pressing soft and tentative against Kady’s - then Kady, hazy with sleep and surprise but also turned right the fuck on, opened her mouth, and the kiss went hot and dirty nearly instantly. 

Alice kissed like a wild thing, like she wanted to eat Kady or climb inside of her (in the best possible way), and Kady was fucking here for it. She grabbed Alice’s hair, tugged her head back so that she could kiss her chin, her jaw, down the pale line of her throat. Alice moaned, caught at Kady’s shoulder to pull her closer and Kady shuddered - god, it had been too long since she’d gotten laid. 

But - she got a hold of herself, pulled back far enough to get a good look at Alice’s face. “Hey, hey - are you sure?”

Alice made an annoyed noise and tried to kiss her again, but Kady edged back. “Alice. It’s been a rough fucking week, okay? I need to know that you want this.”

“What I want -” Alice said, her voice tight, “what I want is to feel anything other than what I’m feeling right now.”

“Okay,” Kady said, “okay,” because yeah, she knew that place, she’d been in that place, had maybe never really left if she was being honest, and at least fucking was a better distraction from it than heroin. She stroked her hand down the side of Alice’s face and kissed her again, and Alice kissed her back, moving in close and wrapping her arms around her, like Kady was the one solid thing in a turbulent sea.

They hadn’t talked about it the next morning, hadn’t really talked about anything, just the two of them, until almost two months later. After Quentin’s memorial, after Penny had apparently got a day pass from the Library and used it solely to pop in for a chat with Hyman so that he could deliver the message: _btw don’t try springing Quentin from the Upside Down, dude’s already blown this popsicle stand_ \- after all that, Alice had dropped off the map for a while, only answering texts and emails sporadically and refusing to tell anyone where she was. 

Until she turned up at Kady’s door, on a clear cold afternoon in January, huddled in a black peacoat. “Zelda offered me a job. She wants me to run the Library.”

“Holy shit,” Kady said, and let her in. Alice sat down on the couch, and Kady made them coffee - she held up the bottle of Jack Daniels and Alice nodded, so she added a shot of whiskey to each cup as well. She handed a cup to Alice and sat next to her on the couch. “Did you say yes?”

Alice took a deep gulp of her coffee. “I told her I’d think about it.”

“Why? What’s there to think about? Shit, imagine everything you could do -”

“Trust me, I have,” Alice said. “All the things I could do, and all the ways I could fuck it up.”

Kady shrugged. “The Library’s already fucked-up. As long as you don’t turn it into an instrument of totalitarian control over all magic-users, you’d still be doing a better job than literally every other person working there now.”

“I don’t know if I can handle it - the responsibility. I mean, why should it be me?” Alice said, staring down into her cup.

“You’re incredibly smart, you’re a powerful magician, you’re a good person -” Kady said, ticking each point off on her fingers.

Alice put her coffee down on the table and stood up, folding her arms and pacing across the room. “You don’t know what kind of person I am.”

“Okay,” Kady said slowly. She put her own coffee down, then leaned back against the couch, watching Alice walk back and forth in front of the windows.

Alice stopped, her arms still tightly folded. “When I was a Niffin, I tortured sentient creatures to death. For fun.” She didn’t look at Kady.

“Well, that’s messed up,” Kady said. “But you were a Niffin - you didn’t have a shade. When Julia lost her shade, she murdered a whole forest of sentient trees. Quentin became the Beast. So if we’re going to start judging people by the shit they do when they don’t have a shade -”

“It’s still a part of me,” Alice said.

“Are you planning on torturing anyone to death for shits and giggles anytime soon?” Kady asked.

Alice glared at her, but hey, at least now she was making eye contact. “No.”

“Great, problem solved.”

“I trapped Plover in the Poison Room,” Alice said.

“Honestly? Fuck that guy,” Kady said.

Alice’s mouth twitched up into a reluctant smile for a second, before fading away. She took a deep breath. “I burned up the keys,” she said. “Because I was afraid - of magic, of myself.”

“Yeah,” Kady said. “You did. And - you apologized. You helped fix it. Do you want to run through the highlight reel of _my_ fuck-ups? Because some of them are pretty spectacular.”

Alice shook her head, but she came back to the couch and sat down again. “I don’t know if I can trust myself.”

“Someone has to run the Library, and personally, I’d be thrilled if that someone was you, instead of any of those sketchy assholes who spent the last year grinding us under their boots,” Kady said. “You care, you try to do the right thing -” 

“But that’s the _fucking problem_ ,” Alice said. She downed the rest her coffee in one go and slammed the cup onto the table. “I thought I was doing the right thing. The Librarians thought they were doing the right thing. Zelda, Everett, all of them - they thought they were making things better. Safer.”

Kady threw her hands in the air. “So take a trip down memory lane to your high school civics class and set up some checks and balances!”

Alice turned to look at her, frowning.

“Making your motto ‘Don’t be evil’ is a good sound-bite, but you’ve got to have a concrete follow-through, or else you’re fucked,” Kady said, rolling her eyes. “You don’t have to do everything all by yourself - in fact, you _shouldn’t_. You have to listen to other people - to other magicians, to the hedges, even to the fucking Librarians, and figure out a system that lets them decide for themselves what they want, instead of imposing your own vision of the way things should be. Or else we’ll be back to square one again.”

Alice was staring at her. 

“What?” Kady said. She could feel her face going hot. 

“Nothing,” Alice said, dropping her gaze. “It’s just - it sounds like you’ve been thinking about this a lot.”

“I have,” Kady said. “I don’t actually want to be the new Marina, okay? She used to run this city like a fucking mob boss. The crisis with the Library is over, and the hedges deserve better. I want - I want to build something new.” 

“Something new,” Alice repeated, her voice quiet. She was looking at Kady again, glancing up at her through her eyelashes.

“Yeah,” Kady said. She looked away, reached for her cup of coffee just to have something to do with her hands. “Look - if you want to keep talking about this, I’m in, but you’ll have to take a rain-check, because I’ve got plans for this afternoon.”

“Oh,” Alice said. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t really -”

Kady got up from the couch, picking up the coffee cups to take back to the kitchen. “It’s no big deal - the rent’s due tomorrow, and I still haven’t found -” she took a second to squint at the list on the fridge, “- a Swampworm Amulet.”

Alice stood up, smoothing down the front of her dress. “Right, so I should go. Unless -”

Kady waited. 

Alice dropped her hands away from her dress and shrugged one shoulder, not quite looking at Kady. “Unless you want some help?”

They got back to the loft six hours later, sopping wet, with one (1) Swampworm Amulet and mud, slime and miscellaneous swamp gunk in places that Kady didn’t even want to think about. They had tried to use magic to clean themselves, which had gotten rid of the worst of it, but Kady was definitely going to have to wash her hair about three times. Three times, minimum.

“Sorry,” Kady said again, yanking her boots off and letting her coat drop to the floor. She’d clean it all up later, right now the priority was getting out of her clothes and into a hot shower, stat. “That was - so much more disgusting than I was expecting it to be.”

“It’s okay,” Alice said. Her teeth were chattering, and she was picking what Kady hoped was just some frozen pond-weed out of the hinge of her glasses. “The giant slugs were - um, unexpected, that’s all. I’ve had worse.”

“Pretty sure that’s a lie,” Kady said, and took off her sweater. It made a ‘splat’ sound when it hit the floor.

“I held a live cockroach in my mouth for ten minutes when I was trying to break out of the Library,” Alice said.

Kady laughed, and then did a double-take at Alice’s flat expression. “Holy shit, you’re not joking.” 

She held out her hand for Alice to fist-bump, and Alice gave her a weird look but tentatively bumped her knuckles against Kady’s. Kady grinned at her. “You’re a certified bad-ass, you know that? After we de-swampify ourselves, I want to hear the rest of the prison break story.”

Alice smiled back at her, small but real, and that was - Alice didn’t smile very much, was the thing, Kady told herself. It was nice to see.

Once she had taken her (extremely thorough) shower and changed, Kady grabbed some extra clothes for Alice and headed back down the hall to the main bathroom. She knocked on the door, then called through it, “Hey, just leaving some clothes outside the door if you can’t magic yours all the way clean -”

Alice opened the door wearing only a towel, and Kady - who had been doing a really good job at forgetting that she had intimate knowledge of what Alice looked like naked - stuttered to a stop and said, “Oh - here,” and thrust the armful of clothes in Alice’s direction.

“Thanks,” Alice said, and then grabbed the clothes with one hand and disappeared back into the bathroom, closing the door with a bang.

Kady stood in front of the closed door for a few seconds, and then went to the kitchen to drink a glass of water and call herself an asshole for perving on Alice, who was her friend, her friend whose boyfriend had just died - _fuck_ , she was such a shit sometimes. She went and dug out her phone from her pile of dirty clothes - thanking the powers-that-be for waterproofing spells - and started searching for a good option for dinner delivery. 

Alice came into the kitchen a couple of minutes later, wearing Kady’s t-shirt and sweatpants. 

“Shawarma okay for dinner?” Kady said, looking determinedly at her phone.

“Oh. Sure,” Alice said.

“If you want something else -” 

Alice touched Kady’s hand where she was bracing it against the kitchen island, tracing her fingertips over the top of it, and Kady froze. Alice pulled her hand away quickly.

“I thought -” Kady said. “Uh, I thought we were pretending that didn’t happen.”

Alice crossed her arms over her chest. “Is that what you want?”

Kady looked at Alice. She was pink-cheeked from the shower, oddly unfamiliar in Kady’s loose, casual clothes instead of her usual dress. But her eyes were wary, her shoulders curled tight and defensive - braced for rejection. 

“No, that’s not what I want,” Kady said, and kissed her.

_Now_

Alice is quiet afterwards.

Kady puts her underwear and shirt back on, not bothering with pants, and walks over to the fridge to grab a beer and one of those gin sodas that Alice likes. She brings them back to the living room, where Alice is sitting on the floor with her back against the couch, curled up in one of the multiple soft throws that the previous owner had left scattered around. She’s put her dress back on but not her tights, and her bare feet are poking out from under the edge of the blanket. Kady picks up another throw and tosses it on top of Alice’s feet. 

“I’m fine,” Alice says. 

“That one’s for me,” Kady says, sitting down and handing Alice her drink. She puts her own drink on the floor and spreads out the throw so that it covers her own legs, and incidentally Alice’s feet. 

“Thanks,” Alice says quietly. She’s staring at the wall of windows. The sky outside is as cold and steely-gray as the buildings.

“No problem,” Kady says. She takes a long drink of her beer, then picks at the corner of the label on the bottle. “You okay?”

“I have been trying so _fucking_ hard -” Alice’s voice cracks, and she blinks rapidly, still staring at the windows. “I have been trying so hard. To let him go.”

“I know,” Kady says. She tightens her grip on the beer bottle, takes another drink.

“Maybe we should do the spell,” Alice says. “Or - or at least try. I know where the room is. Maybe there’s - maybe we can find -”

Kady puts the bottle down on the floor with a clunk. “I know you weren’t around for all of it the last time there was a homicidal rogue god on the loose, but -”

“Julia said it wasn’t a summoning -”

“Okay, I love Julia, but when she sets her mind on something - she just goes for it full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes,” Kady says. “And she drags everyone else along with her, and I told myself I wasn’t going to do that anymore. I knew that she was still looking for a way to bring Quentin back, I just couldn’t -” She’s been busy with the hedges and the Forum, but she’s also been pulling away, trying to keep from getting caught up in Julia’s latest driving obsession.

“But what if she’s right? What if we can bring him back?” Alice says, and the pain and hope in her face is so raw that Kady looks down, stares at her own hands folded in her lap instead.

“We thought we knew what we were doing, when we summoned Reynard,” Kady says. “We were wrong, and people died. Penny died, trying to stop him. Trying to help me stop him.”

Alice reaches over and takes Kady’s hand, squeezes it with her own, and they sit like that for a while. 

This thing with Alice - this thing where they talk about the endless impossible tasks of organizing the Library and the hedges, where they stay up late strategizing and downing too much coffee the night before a Forum meeting, where Alice turns up for dinner almost every other night now, where they fuck and argue and go buy late night groceries from the bodega and then come home and fuck some more - it’s good, it is, but Kady doesn’t know what to do with it, doesn’t know what it means. It’s too easy, and Kady keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop.

She tugs her hand away from Alice’s, and untangles herself from the blanket. “Look, you do what you have to do. I get it - when it was Penny, I would have done anything. I just don’t think I can cross that line, this time.”

Her pants are crumpled under the coffee table. Kady grabs them, gets to her feet, starts looking around for her socks. “I have to go, I’m supposed to meet up with Pete soon -”

“Kady -” Alice says, and Kady looks over at her, where she’s still sitting on the floor, unmoving. 

“What?”

Alice opens her mouth, then closes it again, and finally just says, “Nothing. I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah, sure,” Kady says. She puts on her pants, picks up her socks from their hiding place under the couch, and heads for the door.

*

It’s night-time in Fillory: a cool damp evening, the air heavy with the promise of a storm, and Eliot stands still, holding his cane tight and breathing as quietly as he can, until his night-vision kicks in and he can make out the trees and vegetation of the deep woods surrounding them. They’re going to have to be careful - Fillory has never exactly been safe, but now that there’s a new king with a death warrant out for all children of Earth, it’s once again a shiny magical death trap. Just like the good old days.

Penny lets go of Eliot’s arm slowly; he’s staring into the dark forest, his face tense. “I still think we should have brought Margo.”

“Bambi’s been very over-protective lately,” Eliot says. When Margo finds out he went to Fillory without her, she’s going to be - but he can’t think about that right now. He points towards the lights shining dimly though the trees in the distance. “This way.”

“You mean you think she’d stop you from doing something stupid,” Penny says, but follows Eliot as he makes his careful way through the trees.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Eliot says. “Are you going to try and stop me from doing something stupid?”

“I’m not your goddamn baby-sitter,” Penny says, but then they reach the edge of the woods where the clearing begins, and he sees the house. “Oh, no. No, no, no, _fuck_ no.”

Eliot keeps walking, pushing a large fern out of the way with his cane. “I told you we were going to a witch’s house.”

“You didn’t say we were going to a motherfucking _gingerbread_ house,” Penny says. He hasn’t moved from the edge of the clearing. “With a candy garden - what the hell, Eliot?”

Eliot turns around to look at him. “It’s fine, Q said she was -” _Scary, but didn’t actually try to eat me or anything_ , was what Quentin had said (a long time ago, in another life). “Helpful. You shouldn’t judge people based on harmful stereotypes, you know.”

Penny stares at him like he’s lost his mind, which - fair. Eliot feels like he’s riding a high, on something other than painkillers for once, or aerosolized Fillorian opium. Hope is a hell of a drug.

“The house is mostly wood, anyway,” Eliot says. “I thought you said you weren’t my baby-sitter?”

“No, but I also didn’t think I was serving you up like Meals on Wheels for the local fucked-up fairy-tale nightmare -”

“I’m not going to get eaten!” Probably. Eliot shudders. “Stop talking about it, I have a cannibalism thing.” 

“Doesn’t everyone?” Penny says.

“There was this whole - we were stuck in the Neitherlands, and I hadn’t eaten in days -” Penny is looking increasingly freaked out, so Eliot says, “You know what? Never mind. Wait here if you want, I’ll be -”

“If you say ‘I’ll be right back’, so help me -” Penny says, and Eliot subsides. He’s off his fucking game for sure, if he’s making elementary mistakes like that, but - he turns to look at the house, Julia’s voice still ringing in his ears: _we can do this. This could work._

This could work. They could get him back.

He starts walking towards the witch’s house again, eyeing the clock trees growing next to it. After a few seconds, Penny jogs up next to him. “Two things,” Penny says. “One - never tell me the rest of that Neitherlands story. Two - if I smell anything cooking, I mean anything, we are out of here so goddamn fast, I shit you not.”

They walk through the open gate into the candy garden, and the front door of the house opens. The woman who steps out is, Eliot is ninety percent sure, the same woman he’d seen three years ago, or three hundred and three years ago, standing next to Quentin outside the Wellspring after the Beast had nearly succeeded in murdering them all. The witch Quentin had gone to for help, and had paid in blood.

“Oh, hello there,” the witch says. “You’re just in time for dinner!”

Penny makes a sputtering noise. Eliot discreetly jabs him in the foot with his cane.

“We’re not here for dinner,” Eliot says. “Three hundred years or so ago, a friend of mine paid for your help with a vial of blood, and I’d like it back, please.”

“I see,” the witch says. “Business, not pleasure. Come inside, then, and we’ll discuss the price.”

“Price?” Penny asks, but Eliot is already crossing the threshold. 

“You can wait outside,” the witch says to Penny, who shoots Eliot a thunderous look and holds his hand up in the air, mouthing ‘five minutes’ before the door closes in his face.

The inside of the house is small and homey and very neat, and it doesn’t smell like anything but bread and wood-smoke. For a second, Eliot is back in the cottage at the mosaic - if he just turns his head, Q will standing there by the fireplace, smiling at him - 

He swallows hard, pushes it away; not now, not now - keep it together, get this done. 

The witch crosses her arms and looks him up and down. “King Eliot,” she says. “It’s been - some time.”

“So it has,” Eliot says. “And I have to admit, you look fantastic. Not a day over three hundred and twenty-five.”

The witch raises an eyebrow. “You, on the other hand, look like you’ve seen some hard times. Your highness.”

Eliot resists the urge to straighten his clothes or smooth his hair; it won’t change his pallor or the dark circles under his eyes, or his cane, or the scars hidden under his shirt. Instead he smiles as charmingly as he can and says, “Please, let’s drop the formalities. I’m not exactly a king anymore, what with the latest regime change and all.”

“Well, you know what they say,” the witch says, and walks past him, towards a large apothecary table set against the far wall.

Eliot frowns, and follows her. “No, what do they say?”

The witch doesn’t answer; she’s staring at the table, running her hand along each of the drawers. Her hand stops at the fifth drawer down from the top, and she pulls it open and takes out a black glass vial with a cork lid. She examines it for a moment, then puts in back in the drawer and closes it again. 

“King Quentin’s blood - it’s still good, and three quarters full,” she says. “I didn’t use much. Is that enough for your purposes?”

“Wait, what did you use it for?” Eliot asks, feeling a little sick, because really - what the fuck did she use it for?

“Can come in very handy, the blood of a magician king,” the witch says. “You’d be surprised. Which is why I’ll need your blood as a replacement.”

“Fine, you’ve got a deal,” Eliot says, but the witch shakes her head. 

“That’s part of the deal, but that’s not the price.”

Eliot’s got a bad fucking feeling about this. “Then what’s the price?”

The witch says, “Your voice.”

“My voice?” Eliot laughs, then stops when she just looks at him. “You’re kidding me - is this the part where you break into ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls’?

The witch stares at him blankly, and Eliot clears his throat and says, “I’ve got gold, jewels - there’s some in my bag, but I can get more - or if there are any spells or magical objects -” 

“This isn’t a negotiation,” the witch says. “That’s what it costs.”

Eliot takes a step back without planning to, and the quick movement sends a spike of pain through his bad leg. The witch watches him with cool, steady eyes. “You can leave,” she says, “but if you come back, the price will have gone up.”

Eliot freezes in place. The house is starting to feel way too fucking small, but he’s pretty sure that it’s all in his head, not an actual enchantment. 

“Why do you want it?”

“If the blood of a magician king comes in handy, imagine what the voice of one could do,” the witch says, shrugging.

“I’m not a king anymore,” Eliot says.

“It’s not the kind of thing you stop being,” the witch says, flat and serious.

Eliot clenches and unclenches his hand around the top of his cane, wishes he had a minute to just fucking _think_ \- (Julia staring at them imploringly. _This could work._ )

“Is it really so much to ask?” the witch says. “To bring back what you’ve lost?”

“What the fuck do you know about it?” Eliot snaps. The fire leaps up for a second, wild and sparking, and all the cupboards and drawers in the house rattle - and then Eliot clamps down hard on his telekinesis, and everything stills. The witch doesn’t even look around.

“There’s only so many reasons you’d want someone else’s blood, and it’s usually either love or hate that sends people running to my door with this much - desperation,” the witch says, and then pauses to add thoughtfully, “Unless they’re being chased.” She tilts her head. “Anyway, I don’t think it’s hate that’s driving you down this road, is it?”

“No,” Eliot says.

“So how far will you go, King Eliot?”

As far as I have to, Eliot doesn’t say, his blood pounding in his ears. This is the part where Margo would stop him from doing something stupid, but Margo’s not here. He’d made sure she wouldn’t be here. 

He’s been trying to - Fillory is what saved him the last time, and he’s been trying to focus on that. Fillory needs his help, Margo needs his help, he can’t just check out again, can’t make Margo carry his useless ass any more than she’s already been doing. He won’t tell Margo, not ever, but some small awful part of him had been relieved when they first found out about the time skip, about the newest fucking disaster, because it meant he had something to fight for - to get out of bed in morning for, to stay mostly sober for. 

He breathes in and out, too fast, too shallow. The truth is: it feels like he hasn’t been able to take a deep breath in five months. Like being trapped underwater, struggling for air, not waving but drowning. 

He has a recurring dream where his hands (the monster’s hands) are wrapped around Quentin’s throat, but he’s the one who wakes up gasping. 

He says, “I want a Word as Bond with all the details of our agreement - specifically that that is actually Quentin’s blood, and that it’ll be viable as an ingredient in our spell.”

“A sensible precaution, I agree. Have we got a deal?” the witch says.

(The memory of Q in Eliot’s head: looking down at him, eyes soft, chalk on his chin. _You sacrifice for people you love._ )

“Yes,” Eliot says.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is from "Poor Unfortunate Souls" from Disney's _The Little Mermaid_.
> 
> Kady's line: "I know, but I like to hear you say it" is paraphrase of the line from _Serenity_.
> 
> The motto "Don't be evil" refers to Google's motto.
> 
> "Not waving but drowning" is a poem by Stevie Smith.


	3. Say After Me: It's No Better To Be Safe Than Sorry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She stops, nailing Julia with an iron stare, a High King stare. “This is fucked up, you know that, right? This is fucked up, and it is actively fucking us up, because Quentin is dead and gone and the longer we spend trying to bring him back and failing, the harder it gets to actually deal with it.”
> 
> Julia takes a breath. Counts - _1, 2, 3_ ; lets it out. “I’m not giving up yet.”

Her phone buzzes with a text. Margo ignores it, flips through the pages of yet another completely fucking useless book.

It buzzes again, twice, and she doesn’t look at it. Then Eliot reaches across the table and shoves a piece of paper on top of the book she’s trying to read. 

The paper says, YOU’RE BEING REALLY FUCKING CHILDISH.

“Fuck you,” Margo says, and knocks the paper back across the table. She slams the book closed and tosses it onto the pile with the other rejects, and then gets up to take another stab at the card catalogue search spell. For fuck’s sake, there’s got be something in this goddamn library that’s at least halfway useful.

When she comes back with a new armload of books, she pushes half of them over to Eliot’s side of the table, then starts flipping through the first one in her pile, ignoring Eliot’s pointed stare. He starts scribbling on the paper again, and Margo grinds her teeth and skims the table of contents - nope, also useless, these are all spells for voice amplification - 

The paper lands on top of her book again. This time it says, DON’T MAKE ME USE THE TEXT-TO-SPEECH APP.

Margo makes a face. He’d tried out a bunch of them while they were sitting in the infirmary, waiting for Professor Lipson to finish running her tests, and none of them had been - Eliot had said (had typed), _I don’t know, this one has a Stephen Hawking quality that’s kind of charming_ , but he hadn’t looked particularly charmed. 

She picks up her phone. The first text says, _you’re giving me the silent treatment? excuse me while i go choke to death on the irony_

The second text says, _i had to. you know i had to_

The third text says, _bambi, i’m sorry_

Margo feels her lip start to tremble, and no, no fucking way she’s doing this in the middle of the library, which is full of students because it’s the end of the semester and everyone’s panicked and sleep-deprived and trying to get last-minute projects done (Margo remembers giving a shit about classes and tests and Brakebills in general, but that feels like a long, long time ago now). She gets up and heads for the door, her head down and her phone clutched in her hand, and gives Eliot a sharp ‘come on’ wave as she passes him. Eliot gets up and follows her.

The first thing Eliot had said (had texted), when he had shown up in their dorm room with no voice, a vial of Quentin’s blood and a worried-but-trying-hide-it Penny in tow, was, _don’t worry. it’s not permanent i just pawned it_

And Margo hadn’t stopped yelling, “What the fuck, Eliot, what the fuck!” but she’d believed him, had believed that this was fixable, right up until Professor Lipson had said, “There’s nothing I can do. There’s no physical damage, and technically no magical damage - you’re not cursed. Your voice was traded as payment in a Word as Bond, and there’s no spell that I or anyone else can do that will supersede that.”

Margo had said, looking at Eliot, “But you’ll be able to get it back, once you trade her something equally valuable, right? You made that a part of the deal?” and Eliot’s eyes had shifted away and Margo had gone cold, because of course he fucking hadn’t. She’d been trying to keep an eye on him since he’d mostly tapered off the painkillers, watching for signs of a spiral - but he’d found a different way to punish himself this time, hadn’t he? 

She strides out of the library, down the hall and through a side door, Eliot close behind her, and then they’re outside and alone, thank Christ, so she can turn around and scream at him, “ _Are_ you sorry? Are you fucking sorry?”

Eliot opens his mouth, then rolls his eyes in frustration and types rapidly into his phone using both hands - he’d left his cane behind in the library.

She looks down at her phone as his text comes through: _i’m not sorry i did it, but i’m sorry i didn’t tell you_

He’s staring at her, his face pale and intent, and Margo wants to hurl the phone at his fucking head. 

“You don’t get to do this, you fucking prick,” she snarls. “You don’t get to keep me in the dark, and go _sell pieces of yourself_ , and then act like that’s supposed to be okay!”

Her voice shatters apart on the last few words, and Eliot steps closer, reaching for her, but she holds up her hand to stop him. “Don’t.”

She doesn’t look at him, just stares blurrily down at the ground - trying to breathe through the tightness in her chest, trying to get herself under control. It’s cold outside, the wind cutting through her shirt and making her shiver, and it takes her a second to realize that the frost on the ground around her feet is spreading outward in a growing circle, with her as the epicenter.

“Shit,” she says, wearily, and shoves the phone in her pants pocket before raising her hands to run through a quick warming spell. A soft warm heat starts in her feet and hands and slowly travels through her body, and the circle of frost stops growing.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket. She pulls it out, still not looking at Eliot. The text says, _i thought you might try to stop me. from doing what i needed to_

She would have stopped him, she would have - But all she says is, “What if the spell doesn’t work?”

Eliot texts back, _what if it does?_

When she lifts her head he’s looking at her with his whole broken fucking heart in his eyes, and she can’t -

(Margo had taken his hand and said, “Eliot. He - Quentin died,” and Eliot had just - stopped. He had started to shake his head in automatic denial, but had frozen mid-motion, staring up at her from the infirmary bed with wide, shocked eyes. She had said, “El, I’m so sorry -”, trying to keep her voice steady, but then Eliot had said, numbly, “Did I kill him?” 

She had said, “No - no, god no,” but Eliot had talked over her, frantic, “Did I - Margo, did I kill him? You can tell me if I did, you don’t have to lie, I want to know, did I -” and she had bent over him, pressing her face into his shoulder and saying, “You didn’t, you didn’t, Eliot, I swear, it was the fucking Library - baby, I’m so fucking sorry -” and then they were both crying, Margo against Eliot’s neck and Eliot on his back with tears running down the sides of his face -)

“Fuck,” Margo says, “ _fuck_ ,” and swipes at the wetness on her cheeks, probably smudging her makeup irreparably. This time when Eliot reaches for her, she steps into his arms, lets him pull her close.

“Don’t do that again,” she says, resting her head on his chest. “Tell me next time. Please. I’m saying please, okay?” and Eliot holds her tighter, and his chin brushes against her hair as he nods. “You’re all I have right now, do you get that?”

She’s been trying not to think about Josh. Or Fen, or every other person they had known who - the worst part is the not knowing, not knowing if they’re dead, or alive and trapped somewhere, or some hellish in-between. Three hundred years gone by means that everything they hear about what happened is a combination of legend and propaganda. For every old drunk in a tavern who whispers that High King Fen and Prince Josh escaped and will return one day to claim their rightful thrones, there’s a dozen more stories that end with them being executed, or dying of broken hearts, or turning into fucking birds and flying off to a kingdom in the sky, blah blah blah.

No, she’s been thinking about Fillory instead, about the kingdom, about _her fucking kingdom_ that’s been taken over in a coup d’état by yet another whacked-out magical despot. That’s easier, that’s just another military campaign - they’ve been waiting until Eliot’s in better physical shape before making any serious moves, but Penny’s been dropping them off in the more out-of-the-way corners of Fillory so that they can try and gather intel, figure out what exactly the fuck went down. Once they have a clearer picture of who this dark king is, she’s going to take that shadowy motherfucker _out_. 

But when she’s not planning rebellion and regicide, the truth is she misses Josh so much sometimes that she aches with it: the sex, sure, but mostly the way he smiles at her, his hands, his cooking, his dumbass jokes, how he always tries to take care of her. She misses all of them - Fen, Rafé and Abigail, the Muntjac, even fucking Tick - she misses the place that was _hers_. She misses Quentin and his stupid sad eyes and his endless belief (the last thing he’d said to her: “If - tell Eliot -” then he’d shaken his head, his face pale and exhausted. “Never mind. We’ll be back soon.”) 

It’s been a long, shitty winter, and she is so fucking sick of losing things.

She pulls away eventually, and Eliot looks down at her. “Come on,” she says, “let’s go back and find you a spell before you start brushing your hair with a fork.”

Eliot gives her the finger, along with a shaky smile. Margo grabs his hand and leads him back inside.

They go back to the library, back to sifting through books full of spells that won’t work when slammed up against the limitations of a Word as Bond. They’re supposed to meet Julia and Penny at the Cottage at eleven o’clock, and they’re running out of time.

With ten minutes to go, Margo says, “Shit, just try this one,” passing the book across the table to Eliot. “As a stopgap measure, anyway. The spell picks up on your intention to speak, instead of audible words, so it should rules-lawyer its way around the Bond.”

Eliot studies the book, flipping through the pages, and then runs through a few practice motions. It’s not a particularly complicated spell, but - 

“You need both hands,” Margo says, realizing. “That’s going to be a pain in the ass when you’ve got your cane.”

Eliot shrugs, and casts the spell, fingers moving through the tuts, finishing with his hands held out in front of him, cupped together as if holding a handful of water. Instead of water, his hands are filled with a soft white light, swirling liquidly against his cupped palms.

Eliot’s mouth moves silently, and light rises from the pool in his hands and forms words in the air: _Is this thing on?_

He looks down at the words floating just above his hands; after a few seconds, the words vanish, the light dropping back down into his cupped hands. _Nice_ , Eliot says, _I’m finally subtitled like the classy foreign film I was always meant to be._

“It’ll be more convenient than using the phone, most of the time,” Margo says. “We’ll have to modify it for one-handed casting later -”

 _Who among us hasn’t spent some lonely nights one-handed casting?_ Eliot says, and laughs noiselessly when she rolls her eyes. _I’m sorry - I haven’t been able to talk for hours, I’ve got a lot of terrible double entendres saved up that you’ll have to suffer through. Thank you, Bambi._

“What-the-fuck-ever,” Margo says, but he’s smiling at her with his eyes all lit up, so genuinely pleased and grateful that she can’t help but lean forward and give him a quick hug. “You know I love your terrible double entendres.”

He lifts his hands to return the hug, and the pool of light disappears as the spell breaks.

“Time to go,” Margo says, pulling back. “We don’t want Julia and Penny opening a inter-dimensional gateway into the god of the dead’s rec room without us.”

Eliot casts the subtitles spell again and says, _Yeah, that’s some serious FOMO there._

“We’re gonna to do this thing,” Margo says, with every ounce of certainty she’s got, and Eliot looks at her, that awful mix of grief and hope flickering across his face again. She can’t do anything about Josh or Fen or Fillory yet, but this - this is something she can do. “We’re gonna get our boy back.”

*

Alice steps into the Physical Kids Cottage, and gets hit with a blast of noise. There’s a party going on, just like the old days, but she doesn’t recognize any of the students who are milling around, talking and laughing and drinking. A couple standing by the door give her a weird look - they probably have no idea who she is either. She’s half-way up the stairs, heading for Julia’s room, when it occurs to her that she could be wrong - if they’ve been to any Forum meetings, maybe they’re wondering what the new head of the Library of the Neitherlands is doing at a party in the Cottage at Brakebills.

She’s not used to thinking of herself like that yet, not used to the possibility of being recognized outside of the Forum or the Library itself - and she doesn’t have time to think about whether she likes the idea or not, because she’s standing outside of Julia’s room.

She knocks, and Julia opens the door.

“You said it’s not a summoning,” Alice says, before Julia can say anything.

Julia looks at her carefully. “It’s not. The spell lets us into the Underworld so we can talk to Hades, and to Q, that’s it. No one’s getting summoned or dragged anywhere.”

“Okay,” Alice says. “I’ll show you where the room is in the Mirror World.”

Julia leans against the door frame, her eyes going soft. “Thank you. Alice - I’m sorry about what I said -” 

“It doesn’t matter,” Alice says, crossing her arms. “Let’s just -”

“It does matter,” Julia says. “I shouldn’t have - I know that you want him back too, I know that you -”

“Okay, yes, so let’s do something about it,” Alice interrupts - she’s had enough fucking crying for one day, she can’t do this with Julia right now. “Penny can open the portal and we’ll try -”

Julia steps back in the bedroom, and Alice follows her inside. “Actually - that’s the thing. We have all the ingredients now.”

The bedroom looks like a whirlwind hit it, if the whirlwind was made of up of books and scrolls and spell ingredients. Julia points at a large black vial - it’s sitting on the bed next to an open laptop, a teetering stack of books, a bag of tortilla chips, and a curved, very sharp looking knife. 

“Eliot got Quentin’s blood from -”

“The witch! The witch in Fillory - _shit_ , why didn’t I think of that?” Alice says. She picks up the vial from the bed, turning it carefully in her hands. “But, wait - Fillory had a time skip. She was still there, three hundred years later?”

“She definitely was,” Julia says. “Eliot said that there are clock trees around her house - she must be using some kind of powerful horomancy. And she was there in Fillory’s past too, when Eliot got stuck there with Q during the quest. Or at least there were already rumors about a witch in a gingerbread house in the woods. That’s why he remembered her.”

“During the quest?” Alice says, looking up from the vial. “I thought that was an alternate timeline that got erased, how can he remember that?”

“I don’t know, they just - remembered,” Julia says. “Q said the quest has to change the quester, so -” 

“But - it was a whole lifetime,” Alice says, because Julia’s shrugging it off like it’s a trivial detail, but Jesus fuck. “They got old and died there, that was what the letter to Margo said, right? And they remembered it?”

“Yeah,” Julia says, looking cagey.

“Oh,” Alice says, with the sensation of several things about last year (about Quentin, about Quentin and Eliot and the Monster in Eliot’s body) suddenly slotting into place.

“I, um - I’m going to text Penny,” Julia says, turning away to pick up her phone from the night-table. “He’s actually out looking for you right now. We want to do the spell tonight.”

“Tonight, seriously?” Alice says.

“We’re on a time crunch - the spell has to be done before the sixth new moon after the person’s death, which is -”

“In four days,” Alice says. “But that still gives us a little time.”

Julia looks at her, biting her lip, and says, “There’s another reason for the rush.” She walk over to the closet and pulls open the door, gesturing at Alice to come closer.

Alice puts the vial of Quentin’s blood back on the bed, gently, then walks over to peer inside the closet. There’s a cardboard box on the floor of the closet, and it’s holding a huge egg, wrapped snugly in a fluffy purple blanket.

“Is that - how did you -” 

“Penny and I stole it,” Julia says. “I called Poppy, and she knew a guy who knew a guy.”

“You _stole_ it,” Alice echoes. There have been rumblings for days among the hedges about something big going down, but she and Kady hadn’t been able to pin it to anything solid. Dragon eggs are incredibly valuable - whoever owned it must be losing their shit. “From who?”

“It’s not important. The spell needs a sacrifice, and it can’t be just your standard issue prize bull or sacred deer. But - the people we stole it from probably looking for it right now, so the sooner we get this done, the better,” Julia says, rubbing her upper arms nervously.

“We’re going to kill a baby dragon?” Alice asks, horrified.

“No, no, it’s not fertilized - it’s the same as an egg that you’d eat for breakfast,” Julia says. Alice gives her a skeptical look, and Julia adds, “Basically. It’s basically the same. It also means it’s not producing the pheromones that made everyone egg-licking baby-crazy last time, thank fucking god.”

“Right, Kady told me about that,” Alice says, and there must be - _something_ in her voice, fuck it all to hell, because Julia looks at her sideways.

“So, you and Kady -”

“What about her?” Alice says, flat. She hasn’t even talked to Kady about ‘her and Kady’, she’s not fucking talking to Julia about it.

Julia blinks, then says neutrally, “Do you know if she’ll come and help with the spell?”

Alice ducks her head. “I don’t know. I’ll send her a text, but - she was out on hedge business tonight, and -” and Alice doesn’t know if she’d show, even if she wasn’t. _Penny died, trying to stop him_ , Kady had said, and Alice had ached for her; she knows that grief bone-deep now. Kady’s been - so fucking good to her, has made the last few months into something like a life again, and Alice - it’s just been so long since she’s been with someone and had it be anything other than a messy tangle of passion and guilt and affection and betrayal, of breaking up and making up, of mistakes on top of love of top of more mistakes - 

And she feels unfairly shitty about how much she’s _enjoying_ it, because she loves Q (loved? no, no - loves), would do almost anything to have him back, and yet -

He left her. He’s the one who left (she knows died isn’t the same as left, but it feels the same sometimes), and there are days when she is still so fucking angry with him, days when her rage is so intense and terrible that she half-expects to start burning up from the inside out (again). She always goes to Kady on those days, and Kady doesn’t turn away from her anger; doesn’t turn _her_ away, anymore than she does on the days when Alice can laugh with her and kiss her softly. If Kady won’t do the spell, won’t step back on the path that ended Penny’s life last time, Alice won’t blame her for it.

“Okay,” Julia says, looking down. “Well. If she answers, she answers; if not, we’ll just go ahead.”

Alice nods, taking out her phone to send a text to Kady, then turns back to Julia. “Tell me about the spell.”

Penny shows up ten minutes later, knocking on the door, and Julia gets up from the bed where they’re both sitting to let him in.

“Hey,” Penny says, when he sees Alice. “Thanks for coming back.” 

“Hi,” Alice says, and shrugs uncomfortably, isn’t sure what to say: _Thanks for working so hard to bring my dead (ex?) boyfriend back? With any luck we won’t all also die horribly?_

“So we’re doing this tonight?” Penny says, looking at Julia, who nods. “Want me to go scout the location, start setting things up?”

“Sure, thanks,” Julia says, looking up at him, before swallowing and saying, quickly, “Tell me this is going to work. Lie if you have to.”

“We got this,” Penny says, very low, staring at Julia like she’s the only other person in the room, the only other person in the world maybe. “This is going to work.” 

“Yeah, it is,” Julia says, her mouth curving into a tremulous half-smile.

Penny leans towards her for a moment, before straightening back up with a jerk. His eyes dart from Julia to Alice and back again, then he says, “I’ll go - do the thing,” and disappears, before reappearing a moment later, grabbing a shovel and a canvas bag propped against the wall, and disappearing again.

Alice looks at Julia, who’s standing with her arms crossed tight, watching the space where Penny had been with a lost, angry expression. She turns around, and Alice drops her eyes back to the moldering scroll in her lap, caught.

“It’s not - we’re not - ” Julia says.

“I didn’t say anything.”

Julia sighs, and comes back over to sit on the bed. “It’s complicated.”

“I’m sure it is,” Alice says.

Julia’s head comes up, her eyes narrowing, but then her lips twist up at one corner and she says, “You know, when other people say that, they mean ‘we haven’t had the Define the Relationship’ conversation yet, or ‘I have commitment issues and he keeps liking his ex’s pictures on Instagram’, but with us it’s all fucking - alternate timeline doppelgangers and hey, how about I get some input into my own immortality vs. humanity -”

“Oh, fuck, I _know_ ,” Alice says, “did you ever see Josh’s Hook-up/Murder Chart, holy shit -” and for a second the moment sours (Josh gone too, maybe dead, maybe not, who the fuck knows), but then Julia says, “- oh god, imagine the updated version,” and then they’re both laughing helplessly, leaning into each other on Julia’s bed.

“Okay,” Alice says, shaking her head, still smiling despite herself, “can we get back to ancient Greek incantations now, please?”

Julia lets out one more giggle, reaching her hand up to wipe at the corners of her eyes. “Yes, definitely.”

Which is when everything in the room starts to float. Literally everything - the furniture, the bed, the books and the laptop and everything else scattered across the bed, including Alice and Julia - Alice makes a desperate grab for the vial of Quentin’s blood and clutches it close - everything in the room is floating an inch or two in the air. Alice can hear shrieks of surprise coming from the hallway and the other bedrooms, even through the door. 

“Are _you_ doing this?” Alice says, but Julia’s shaking her head, looking bewildered and then suddenly furious. 

“If this is the fucking first years again -” she starts, and then gravity comes back on as abruptly as it left, and they drop back onto the bed, which drops back to the floor with a thud. It’s not a big drop, but it’s unexpected and jarring, and they stare at each other for a moment in shock. Then Julia leaps off the bed and runs over to the closet, yanking the door open and bending over the cardboard box inside it. 

She calls over, her voice heavy with relief, “The egg’s okay,” and straightens up, making a bee-line for the door. “I’m going to kill those motherfuckers.”

She marches out of the room, and Alice climbs off the bed and follows her out into the hall and down the stairs, pushing her way past the other freaked-out students who are flooding out of the bedrooms to find out what’s going on. The music’s been turned off downstairs, and there are a lot of people clumped together and yelling at each other; Julia’s standing at the bottom of the stairs, glancing around and then grabbing someone’s shoulder as he tries to move past her.

“Todd, what the hell -” Julia’s saying, as Alice reaches the bottom of the stairs. 

Todd gives Julia a flustered, exasperated look and says, “The _fucking_ first years - sorry, Julia, I’ve got to -”

“The fucking first years,” Julia says, grimly. “Yeah, no, I’m coming with you this time, you’re too nice to them -”

The front door opens, just missing hitting all three of them, and Margo walks in, with Eliot behind her. 

“If you’re looking for who to blame for that massive fuck-up of a levitation spell, there are some morons on the lawn screaming about flying and happy thoughts,” Margo says.

“Hi Margo, hi Eliot! Uh, excuse me, though,” Todd says, and shuffles his way past them and takes off out the door, Julia right behind him, saying, “I’m serious, Todd, this is worse than when we all had cat ears and tails for two hours, you need to shut this shit down -” 

Margo watches them go with a raised eyebrow, then looks at Alice. “So - you’re in?”

“Yeah,” Alice says.

“Good,” Margo says, “because you’re the best we’ve got. I’m getting a drink, you want one?”

“Um - no,” Alice says, blinking, and Margo turns around to look at Eliot, who’s still standing in the open doorway, not quite inside the Cottage. “You want anything?”

Eliot leans his cane against the door, and then casts a quick spell, a pool of light forming in his hands. His mouth moves as though speaking, but nothing comes out, then the light rises up from his hands and forms words: _Just water for me, thanks._

Alice stares. “What -”

Eliot glances at her. _Alcohol doesn’t mix well with painkillers, and definitely doesn’t mix well right before attempting near-impossible ancient spells_ , the words say.

“Why are you - what happened to you?” Alice says, then winces - okay, she could have put that more delicately.

“Julia didn’t tell you?” Margo says. “He traded his voice to a sea-witch so he could be a Part of Our World.”

Eliot rolls his eyes and says, _Will you be running out of Little Mermaid jokes any time soon?_

“Oh, hell no,” Margo says, heading off into the crowd, toward the kitchen. “I’ve got dozens lined up.”

 _At least try something more topical - ugh, she can’t read this_ , Eliot says, looking annoyed, as he watches Margo walk away.

“You traded it for the blood,” Alice says. “For Q’s blood.” She’s actually - she’s still holding the vial of blood in her hand; she looks down at it, and when she looks back up at Eliot, he’s staring at it too. 

_If you want to cross a bridge, you’ve got to pay the toll_ , Eliot says.

“Eliot - ” Alice says, and he looks at her, and it’s like looking into a mirror, seeing her own loss and agony reflected back at her, and she can’t say anything - ironically, her throat’s gone too tight to speak, and it’s ridiculous and awful and Alice _hates_ it, hates feeling this way, staggered by grief every time. She’s been running from it for months, but it always finds her again. 

She steps closer, reaches out with her free hand - he’s still holding his hands together for the spell, so she wraps her fingers carefully around his wrist and holds on tight. Eliot leans towards her, rests his forehead against the top of her head for a moment.

“Thank you,” Alice says, once she can get the words out.

 _Thank you for changing your mind_ , Eliot says, straightening up.

She hadn’t admitted it to Julia, but - “He _would_ do it for me.” She sniffs, and adds, “That stubborn fucking idiot.”

Eliot grins at her. _That’s our Q._

A gust of wind comes sweeping through the open door, making Alice shiver. _Should probably close that and stop letting all the heat out_ , Eliot says, looking at the door, and Alice lets go of his wrist and takes a step back. 

“We can go upstairs -”

 _No, I think I’ll wait outside_ , Eliot says, and he drops his hands, the light vanishing, and picks up his cane again.

“Right,” Alice says. Eliot can’t stand the Cottage anymore. “Well - we should be ready soon. We’ll come meet you outside, okay?”

Eliot gives her a mock-salute and goes out the door, closing it behind him. 

Alice looks down at the vial of Quentin’s blood in her hand. Holding it makes her feel closer to him, which is stupid and illogical, but true all the same. She closes her eyes for a second, imagines Q standing in front of her: not the last, terrible glimpse of him that’s haunted her nightmares for the past five months, but the way he’d looked before, sitting next to her on the stairs before they left for the Mirror World. The Q in her mind is tired and worried, but he smiles at her, just a little.

Wait for us, Alice says to him, silently. We’re coming.

“Here we go,” Penny says, and then they’re - somewhere else. It’s just the five of them, since Kady never responded to her texts. Alice takes a deep breath, swallows down the brief swirl of nausea that she always gets from Traveling.

“You okay?” Julia asks. She’s still holding Alice’s hand.

“Yes, fine,” Alice says, releasing Julia’s hand and stepping away. 

They’re standing at a crossroads: two dirt paths criss-crossing near the edge of a rocky cliffside, surrounded by low trees and bushes, shadowy hills rising up above them. It’s dark, with only the faintest hint of blue lightening the sky in the distance, and Alice can hear waves crashing at the bottom of the cliff, can smell salt in the air.

“Where are we, again?” Margo asks.

“Greece,” Penny says.

He’s already done most of the set-up for them - dug the shallow hole in the ground in the center of the crossroads, with five short trenches branching out from it like spokes on a wheel, a stocky unlit candle sitting at the end of each trench. There are a couple of hurricane lanterns providing the only actual light; the moon’s already set and there are barely any stars visible through the cloud cover.

“Theoretically, you could open a door to the Underworld from anywhere, but I figured we should replicate the conditions of the original spell as closely as possible,” Julia says, walking between two of the trenches to the middle of Penny’s earthwork sigil and removing her backpack. She kneels down to pull out the dragon egg and place it carefully into the hole; then takes the vial of Quentin’s blood out of the pocket of her jacket, and opens it with a tug. She hesitates, just for a moment, then pours the blood over the top of the egg.

There are four industrial-size plastic jugs and a large bundle of flowers sitting near one of the hurricane lanterns; Alice picks up the first jug, Margo following her to grab the next one, while Penny gets the last two, handing one off to Julia once she’s finished with the egg. Eliot shrugs out of his long coat and lays it on the ground along with his cane, then leans over to pick up the flowers: lavender, by the smell.

Alice carries her jug over to the end of the nearest trench, then waits until the others are in place. One by one they turn to look at her, each of them standing at the end of their own trench, forming a circle around the sigil. 

“Is everybody ready?” Alice asks, shaking out her hands; she’s half-trembling with nerves, and she’s starting to wish she’d taken that drink Margo had offered. 

“Ready,” Julia says, and Penny and Eliot nod.

“Ready,” Margo says. “Let’s go knocking on heaven’s door.”

Alice lifts her hands, begins the first incantation. Julia had been right - it isn’t a summoning. The spell doesn’t mention Hades at all, or any other god; they’re appealing to the Underworld itself, asking it to open a doorway for them, to grant them safe passage into its heart.

She finishes the first part of the spell, slowly letting her hands fall to her sides. Nothing’s happening yet, nothing feels different - the wind is rising, but she’s not sure if that’s an effect of the spell or not. She tries to push down the choking, bitter fear - that it’s all pointless, that there’s only a snowball’s chance in hell of this actually working, that they’re all just permanently fucking stuck in the denial stage of grief. “Okay - time for the offerings.”

Alice kneels over her jug, unscrewing the lid and dropping it on the ground, then does a warming spell - the one she’s got is full of honey, and warming it up will make it flow more easily. She picks up the jug and pours its contents out into the trench; she moves sideways to spread the honey throughout the length of it, until honey is running into the shallow hole where the dragon egg sits. The others do the same with their own jugs: Julia’s is filled with milk, Penny’s with salt, and Margo’s with wine. Eliot unties the lavender from its bundle and scatters the stalks along the trench, dropping the final one into the hole next to the egg. Once they’re done, they take their places back at the end of each trench, the unlit candles at their feet.

Alice starts the next incantation: pleading for the Underworld to accept their offerings, their sacrifice.

 _“Take them: gifts from the living, given freely to the land of the dead,”_ she says, and finishes the final tut. 

She lowers her hands, and they all stare at each other.

“Shouldn’t something be -” Margo says, but then Julia makes a soft, startled noise.

“The candles -” Julia says.

The candles at the end of each trench are lit, flickering with an uncanny flame - it’s the wrong color, almost gray, and Alice thinks, sickeningly, of the monochrome of the Mirror World. 

“Holy shit,” Penny says. “It’s fucking _working_.”

The candle flames rise higher, higher - then the candles tip over one by one into the trenches, setting them ablaze, the eerie not-gray fire rippling across the top of the offerings. The fire spills from the trenches into the hole with the dragon egg, surrounding it with a ring of flames. Alice isn’t sure if any of the offerings are actually burning; the fire doesn’t seem to be consuming them, and she can’t smell anything - the milk and the lavender at least should definitely - 

The wind slams into her, and she nearly stumbles, her hair whipping into her face. She hears Margo shout, “Jesus fucking Christ,” and when Alice turns to look at her, Margo is staring up to the sky, where the dull gray clouds have turned into a massive swirling vortex, lit up by a flash of lightning in the distance. 

“Hey,” Alice says, then yells, trying to be heard over the wind, when Margo and Penny keep looking up at the sky. “Hey! We have to do the last part together, are you ready?”

There’s a muted rumble of thunder, not that close (not yet), but Alice flinches at the noise anyway. But they’re all staring at her now, nodding, faces set in varying degrees of fear and hope and determination, and when Alice raises her hands for the final sequence of tuts, four other pairs of hands rise in a echo of her movement.

Alice recites the last incantation - it’s not complicated, just a very polite ancient Greek version of: _“Let us in, let us in, let us in.”_

The last series of tuts are supposed to be repeated over and over again; the spell had given no set number or instructions other than, essentially, ‘keep going until it works’. Alice moves her hands through the sequence, then starts over from the beginning. Again - three times now, four times, five times -

When it hits her, it’s - they used to jump off the dock into the lake at her aunt Genji’s place, her and Charlie: a flat run down the dock, bright sunlight and the open bowl of the sky, hot baking summer air and warm weathered wood under her bare feet, and then the leap - and then the water, her whole body all at once deep in the dark and the cold, surrounded, transported - the shock of it.

The magic is like that, hitting her like a tidal wave, a plunge into the depths of a frozen lake - it’s the Underworld, the shadow world, the world that’s _not_ , beneath the world that _is_. It’s not like any magic Alice has ever felt (except maybe as a Niffin, but she can’t _remember_ anymore),and it is wildly, epically beyond their control. 

She’s gasping for air, shaking, aching with cold; there’s something wet on her face, a metallic taste in her mouth, but it’s not until she sees the blood dripping down Eliot and Julia’s faces that she realizes that her nose must be bleeding too. 

She doesn’t stop moving her hands through the tuts. The fire surrounding the dragon egg is rising higher, nearly encasing it, and - they’re close, they’re so close, she can feel it -

Lightning flashes, painting them all in white light and harsh contrast. The others look as bad as she feels: there are tears running down Julia’s cheeks, Eliot’s face is twisted with pain, Margo’s grimacing, her hands jittering so badly that she can barely complete each tut. Penny’s shoulders are hunched, his head bowed, but then he looks up at the flash and sees the blood on Julia’s face, and his eyes go huge. The thunder crashes, so much closer this time.

“We have to stop,” Penny yells, over the wind’s howling, “we can’t handle this, we’re gonna Niffin out -”

“No!” Julia screams it right along with Alice. “No, no, keep going,” Alice yells, because they’re right on the edge of it, they’re underwater, caught in the current, but they’re not drowning yet, not yet - “I know what it feels like, okay? I know what it fucking feels like, and we’re not there yet! Keep going, trust me!”

Penny stares at her incredulously, but his hands keep moving through the sequence. They’re all looking at her again, trusting that she’s right, and Alice really, really fucking hopes that she’s right - she is, though, she _knows_ she is, they can do this - “Hold on, just a few more seconds -”

The air smells like burning lavender, and the dragon egg crumbles into the fire.

The sensation of a spell working, like a key turning in a lock.

The fire shoots up in a column into the sky (and down into the ground), and there’s a flash of blinding light, a bone-rattling crash of thunder, and Alice is thrown off her feet, hits the ground hard on her back. 

She lies still and tries to breathe, tries to blink away the afterimage floating in front of her eyes. The shadow of the Underworld is gone, but the storm is still raging: the wind is fierce and unrelenting, and lightning shatters its bright line through the sky. The thunder booms, and Alice instinctively lifts her hands to cover her ears, the way she used to when she was a little kid.

She aches, all over - even her fucking teeth hurt, and she can’t stop shivering. She sits up slowly, pushing her glasses back into place, and looks around - the others are all moving, if with the same pained, careful motions, and the fire’s gone out. There’s nothing left in the sigil but ashes.

“Fucking _ow_ ,” Margo says loudly, sitting up.

“Did anyone else feel the earth move?” Penny shouts over the wind. “That’s not a euphemism, I think we caused an actual earthquake.”

“Did it work?” Julia asks, looking around wildly.

Eliot suddenly scrambles to his feet, staggering and almost face-planting in the process, and points at the rocky hillside, rising at a near vertical angle from one side of the crossroads. He drops his arm, and casts the pool of light spell he’d used before, turning to the rest of them and saying, _There’s a door, there’s a fucking door, do you see it?_

“Shit, yes, I see it,” Alice says, starting to shove herself up, because he’s right, there’s a dark hole in the hill, an arched doorway where before there had only been solid rock and moss.

Before any of them can move, a loud growling noise comes from the copse of trees next to the hill, and lightning flashes just in time to illuminate the giant furry body of a (whatever-the-fuck-that-is) monster as it emerges from the trees. 

Alice’s brain finally processes what her eyes are seeing - it’s a _three-headed dog_ the size of an elephant, and it’s headed right for them.

Alice jumps to her feet, adrenaline blasting through the residual pain and shakiness, and starts flinging every single battle magic spell she can think of in the monster dog’s direction (and she knows its name, doesn’t she? They should have seen this coming, _fuck_ -) Eliot, Julia and Penny are doing the same, while Margo is kneeling down, yanking her ice-axes out of her bag. 

The dog is moving too fast, none of their spells are even slowing it down - Penny dives for Julia, grabbing her by the arm, and they both vanish. Eliot spins around, holding a small red ball out towards Margo; she nods quickly, and yells at Alice, “Fire in the hole, take cover!” before dodging left, as Eliot turns back to the dog and throws the ball at the dog’s feet. 

A wall of fire erupts in front of the dog; it tries to skid to a halt, but it’s moving too fast, and it hits the fire, letting out a eerie wail of pain and fury. 

Alice makes a break for the door in the hill, but the dog’s spinning around, screaming in a voice - three voices - that sound almost as human as they do canine, and Alice throws up a shield spell just as one of the dog’s three heads snaps towards her. Its mouth hits the shield hard - very large teeth, way too fucking close - and the head rears back. 

She backs up, keeping the shield spell up in front of her, and then she hears something whistle past her and an axe buries itself in the dog’s nose. It screams and throws itself backwards, pawing at the axe, and someone grabs Alice’s shoulder, pulling her around. It’s Margo, who tries to say something but gets drowned out by the thunder crashing overhead; instead, she yanks at Alice’s arm, dragging her towards the closest stand of trees. 

Alice follows her, and they duck behind the trees, while the dog continues to howl with all three heads; it’s also shaking its injured head hard, trying to dislodge the axe. 

“It’s between us and the door,” Alice yells over the wind and the dog’s shrieking. “Where did Julia and Penny go?”

“Fuck if I know,” Margo yells back. “Eliot got around it though, I covered him - I think he made it to the door.” She’s still got an axe in one hand and her eyes are wild, but then she gives Alice a wry look and shouts, “I guess we should have been ready for fucking Cerberus, but who even thought we’d get this far? Should we try a music spell?”

“We can try, but I don’t know if it’ll be able to hear it over -”

Penny appears next to Margo, who snaps at him, “Where the fuck did you go?”

Penny rolls his eyes and reaches for both of them, and Alice feels the lurch as they Travel. 

They’re on the other side of the crossroads now, closer to the hill, standing behind a boulder that’s crumbled down off of the hillside. Julia’s crouched by the boulder, and as soon as they appear, she leaps to her feet and says, “Let’s go, let’s go, Eliot’s there already - I cast an illusion spell to distract it -”

Beyond the boulder, Alice can see Eliot waiting near the doorway; he’s leaning with one hand braced against the hill, looking back and forth between them and the dog, which is definitely being distracted by the hundreds of phantom squirrels that are racing around the crossroads. 

Alice hears a crashing noise in the trees behind them, and as she turns around two women dressed in what looks like rags and leaves come hurtling towards them. They slam into Margo and Penny, knocking Margo to the ground and sending Penny stumbling backwards. 

Penny manages to grab the wrists of the woman attacking him, and both of them disappear. The woman on top of Margo is clawing at Margo’s face, making wild grunting sounds; Margo screams and slams the flat side of her axe into the woman’s head, sending her reeling back. Alice catches hold of the woman’s shoulders and pulls her off Margo, shoving her sideways to the ground, while Julia runs forward and hits the woman with a freezing spell. 

“Shit, you okay?” Julia asks, helping Margo sit up; there’s blood all over her face.

“What the fuck was that?” Margo spits, and Alice stares down at the frozen woman on the ground. Now that she’s got a good look at her, it’s obvious that she’s not human: she has strange grooves on her face and claws on her hands, and a crown of ivy leaves twisted into her tangled hair. 

“They’re maenads,” Alice says, then jerks her head up to start scanning the trees, because - shit, shit, shit, maenads travel in _packs_. They are so goddamn unprepared for this -

Julia says, “That’s not what maenads look like -”

“Someone must have fed them after midnight,” Margo says shakily, touching the scratches on her face.

“It’s what they look like when they’re caught up in an axe-crazy Bacchanalian frenzy,” Alice says.

There’s a flash of lightning, followed by a loud growl, and Alice spins around - the dog’s spotted Eliot, who’s backing up towards the doorway, glancing over at them and waving his hands frantically and mouthing what looks like _come on, come on_. 

The dog starts stalking towards him, and Eliot walks backwards through the doorway, still waving at them to hurry - and then - 

\- and then the doorway is gone as if it were never there, nothing left but the steep, stony hillside.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is from "Take on Me" by _A-ha_ , because you know what? In the original music video, the supposedly dead guy comes back at the end.
> 
> Eliot's line, "If you want to cross a bridge, you have to pay the toll," is a paraphrase of the line from "Poor Unfortunate Souls", from Disney's _The Little Mermaid_. 
> 
> "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" is a song by Bob Dylan.
> 
> Alice's line, "Wait for us, we're coming," is a reference to the musical _Hadestown_.


	4. Down Below, Six Feet Under the Ground Below

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She stops, nailing Julia with an iron stare, a High King stare. “This is fucked up, you know that, right? This is fucked up, and it is actively fucking us up, because Quentin is dead and gone and the longer we spend trying to bring him back and failing, the harder it gets to actually deal with it.”
> 
> Julia takes a breath. Counts - _1, 2, 3_ ; lets it out. “I’m not giving up yet.”

Kady finishes her drink, and wishes, as always, that she’d ordered a double. She’s been trying not to though, these days - the ordering, anyway, she doesn’t think she’ll ever get rid of the wishing. 

“It’s been five days since I’ve heard from her. Usually we text every day, all the time!” Luca says. 

Kady looks at Pete, who sighs and says, “Yeah, man, that sounds rough. Did you guys have a fight, by any chance?”

“No!” Luca says plaintively, then: “Okay - she said I was getting a little clingy, but that wasn’t a fight, that was like, communicating. As a couple - like you’re supposed to!”

“She is a succubus,” Kady says. “Maybe she just used you and moved on. Like they do.”

Luca glares at her, pushing his floppy green hair back from his face. “Jez isn’t like that. And it’s really fucking uncool of you to paint all succubi with the same brush -”

“You’re right,” Pete says, kicking Kady’s ankle. “Of course you’re right, because you know Jez better than we do. But - did she say anything, anything at all that might suggest that she - uh, maybe just needs some space?”

“No - I mean, she did - she said some stuff about how I made her ex in Queens look good in comparison, but she would never go back to that guy - he’s a total dickbag, she talks about how terrible he is all the time,” Luca says.

This time Pete looks at Kady, so she shrugs and says, “Luca, I think you got ghosted for the dickbag in Queens.”

“No,” Luca says, putting his hands down flat on the bar’s grimy and graffitied surface. “She’s not like that, I swear. If she wanted me to fuck off, she would tell me to fuck off. She would tell me it’s over. I think - I think something really bad happened to her.”

Kady rubs at her forehead - it’s been a terrible day (aside from the one bright spot in the form of Alice), and if Luca’s succubus girlfriend has actually disappeared, that’s an new data point to add to a pattern that’s only going to make it worse.

“Fine,” Kady says, “give us your info, and we’ll get in touch, see if anything turns up, okay?”

Luca nods gratefully, and Pete starts taking down his contact information. 

She and Pete are at a hedge bar in Brooklyn, doing what Pete smarmily calls ‘face-time’ and Kady calls ‘getting a drink in a bar after five hours of extracting bloodworms from hedges all over the fucking East Coast’. Alice had loaned her a Library Travel-card so that they could hit up safe-houses in Portland, Bangor, Burlington and Providence; there are still plenty of hedges half in hiding, who don’t trust the truce with the Library, who refuse to take the Library up on their offer of bloodworm removal services - but they trust Kady and Pete, so they’re the ones in a new city every week, handing out bottles of bloodworm antidote to nervous hedges and teaching them the spell that goes along with it. It’s tiring and a little boring, but Kady’s just glad to do something concrete and useful to help, and Pete is deadly serious about it, organizes every trip down to the last detail to make sure they reach everyone who needs them.

Kady would have been happy to head home and collapse afterwards, but Pete tends to get weird and down after a bloodworm trip, goes quiet and rubs at the place where he had his Reed’s Mark removed - and yeah, maybe he’s playing her, but maybe not, so Kady had gone to the bar with him when he’d asked.

“You need to show everyone that you’re still Jenny from the Block,” Pete had said.

“How do you say that shit with a straight face?” Kady had said, but she gets it: whenever she goes to a hedge bar now, after about half an hour or so people just start - turning up, sidling up next to her at the bar, with problems usually, but sometimes with information, or just to make conversation. The whole thing still feels a little too _The Godfather_ sometimes, but Kady’s getting used to it. The hedges need things, and even if she can’t always give them what they need, at least she can show that she’s listening, that they can trust her to try.

After Luca leaves, slinking off the bar stool and disappearing into the crowd, Kady and Pete look at each other. 

“Fuck,” Pete says. “Another one?”

“Maybe,” Kady says. “I’m not sold. He’s only been seeing her for a few months, that’s nothing. People get ghosted all the time -”

“A few months isn’t nothing,” Pete says. “And Luca said she’s not like that -”

“Oh, give me a break,” Kady says. “Like he knows. Like anyone ever really knows what’s going through someone else’s head. Except for the fucking psychics, and even they get it wrong half the time.”

“Trouble in paradise?” Pete asks, giving her a knowing glance.

“Fuck off,” Kady says.

Pete is, at times, smarter than he looks, because he shrugs, tosses back the rest of his drink, and says only, “Okay, but if she is missing - how many is that now?”

“Six,” Kady says. Six magical creatures: three hedges who also happen to be werewolves, a banshee, a vampire and now a succubus, all gone missing in the last month or so. “Six that we know of.”

Someone bumps her hard from behind, and when Kady turns around, twisting on the bar stool, she’s staring into Marina Andrieski’s smiling face. 

“Kady! _So_ sorry about that,” Marina says brightly.

“What the hell do you want?” Kady says, because of course - there’s still so many more ways for this day to get shittier.

“Oh, right, right - please accept my most gracious apologies,” Marina says, dropping into a wobbly half-bow, half-curtsy. “Don’t get me wrong, all due respect for the queen - uh, witch of New York.”

Marina’s voice is too loud and her body language is sweeping and dramatic - the other bar patrons are turning to look, and a hush is falling over the nearby conversations: an audience’s instinctive reaction to a potential show.

Kady isn’t inclined to give them one. “What. The fuck. Do you want?” She makes her voice as bored as possible, and is rewarded with a flash of anger from Marina, darkening her mocking smile. 

“What I want, what I really really want,” Marina says, slouching bonelessly against the back of the bar stool next to Kady’s, “is for you to tell your boo to get her fucking people under control and stop hassling hedges.”

Marina smells like pricey perfume and vodka and doesn’t seem to believe in the concept of personal space, and Kady has to fight to stop herself from leaning away. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, come on, she goes by Alice - Miss Quinn if you’re nasty,” Marina says, grinning at Kady like they’re friends sharing a joke. “Blonde, great rack, always eye-fucking you over the top of her glasses -”

Kady slides off of her stool in one fluid motion (she’s vaguely aware of Pete making a grab for her arm and missing) so that she’s standing face to face with Marina, their noses inches apart. Marina doesn’t move, barely even flinches, and Kady wonders exactly how drunk she is. 

“Are you going to fight me for her honor?” Marina asks. She sounds delighted by the idea. “Pistols at dawn is traditional, but I vote for jello wrestling.”

“I vote for that, too,” Pete says. 

Marina gives him a contemptuous look, but Kady’s grateful for the interruption. She takes a breath, reminds herself that starting a barfight with Marina, while satisfying, would do fuck-all for the cause of hedge solidarity. 

“What do you mean, hassling hedges?” Kady asks. She crosses her arms and lets herself slouch back against the bar stool.

“Librarians showing up at Al’s, the Green Man Bar, the Bed Stuy safe-house, and who knows where else, is what I mean,” Marina says, tossing her hair back. “Coming around and asking questions as though they still have any fucking authority over us.”

“What kind of questions?”

Marina lowers her voice slightly, but it’s still loud enough that a third of the bar is probably listening in. “Someone’s been naughty.”

Kady just stares at her, waits her out, and finally Marina rolls her eyes and says, “A dragon egg got stolen a few days ago, and apparently the Library considers the usual suspects to be the entire hedge population of the Five Boroughs.”

“Stolen from where, a Library branch?” Kady asks. There have been rumors about _something_ happening, sending ripples and eddies through hedge spaces recently, but this is the first she’s heard of a theft specifically involving the Library. And - Alice hasn’t mentioned anything about a dragon egg going missing.

“Don’t know, don’t give a shit. Why don’t you ask the oh-so-lovely Miss Quinn?” Marina says. “What I _do_ give a shit about is those control-freak assholes in suits trying to throw their weight around like they’re still in charge.” She pauses dramatically. “Because they’re _not_ still in charge. Right?”

There’s a tense silence from the section of the bar that’s very obviously eavesdropping on their conversation, and Kady heroically does not throw a punch at Marina’s smug face.

“No,” Kady says. “They’re not.”

“Great!” Marina says. “So why don’t you go ahead and remind your girlfriend of that little fact, mmkay? Slip it into your pillow talk?”

“Ready to go, babe?” There’s a woman in a leather jacket standing by the door, looking at Marina expectantly.

“If you’re ready, I’m ready, as always,” Marina says, turning to smile at her, and actually sounds like she means it, which - Kady’s not sure if she’s ever seen Marina express a genuine emotion before, other than anger and fear. “Just catching up with our Dear Leader here, but I think we’ve wrapped things up, huh, Kady? Ciao, bella! Be seeing you!”

Marina heads for the exit before Kady can say anything; she slings her arm around the other woman’s waist when she reaches her, and they disappear through the door together.

Kady drops back onto her bar stool and stares at her empty glass. 

“That Marina, always such a fucking ray of sunshine,” Pete says. 

“I am so goddamn done with this day,” Kady says. She wants to put her head down on the bar in defeat. She wants another drink. Dealing with Marina always puts her teeth on edge, sends her right back in time to the girl she used to be, desperate and miserable and trapped under Marina’s thumb. It doesn’t matter that this Marina technically isn’t the one who kept her in debt slavery, isn’t the one who killed her mother - her eyes are the same and her voice is the same, she’s the identical flavor of cold and vicious and she’d pull the same fucked-up shit in a heartbeat given half a chance, Kady knows it in her bones.

“Okay, so you’re probably not going to want to hear about the text Maryam just sent me,” Pete says, looking down at his phone.

“For fuck’s sake, what now?” Kady asks.

“She found a body in the Lair,” Pete says.

There’s a whole city beneath the city, is the thing - if you know where to look. Layers and layers of abandonment, over a century’s worth - old buildings, terminated construction projects, permanently out-of-service subway stations and tunnels, with the sewer system weaving its way through all of it. There’s the places everybody knows about, the ones that appear on tourist websites, like the old City Hall station; then there’s the deeper, darker places - the tourists don’t show up, but addicts and homeless people and maybe a few thrill-seekers do. 

And then there’s the city underneath the underneath, which can only be found with magic.

“I can’t believe you stopped for pizza,” Kady says, as they shuffle under a fallen ceiling support, and she tilts two fingers up to move the floating glow ball that they’re using for light into a better position. The tunnels are dark and freezing, with moisture trickling down the walls in a constant stream, and Kady is pretty sure she can smell the sewer nearby, which Pete keeps insisting is impossible - like he’s a fucking expert.

“Hey, you said, ‘get Gordy down here’, and _he_ said he’s not coming unless there’s pizza, so -”

“What I wouldn’t give for an actual medical examiner, instead of a fucking veterinarian who wants to eat pizza while he’s poking at a corpse,” Kady says. “Here, give me the box while you take down the wards.”

Pete hands her the pizza box, and lifts his hands to begin dismantling the wards on the small door hidden in the wall of the tunnel. It only takes a few minutes, but the damp is soaking through Kady’s jacket and she shifts back and forth, trying not to shiver.

Once Pete gets the door open, they both duck through, reset the wards, and then hurry up the short set of steps until they reach the main room that Maryam uses for her workshop/laboratory. It’s a million times better in here - still chilly, but the floor’s mostly dry and Maryam has the place lit up with flood-lamps. 

“Maryam, it’s us,” Pete calls out, and Maryam hurries into the room, big-eyed and looking about ready to crawl out of her skin.

“Oh, fuck me, I’m glad you guys are here,” Maryam says. “He’s on the floor right near the cross-section exit -” She stops, staring at the box in Kady’s hand. “Did you bring _pizza_?”

“It’s for Gordy, that fucking weirdo,” Kady says. 

“You want some?” Pete asks.

“No, Pete, I don’t want pizza, I want to get the hell out of here,” Maryam says. “I’ve been alone in here baby-sitting a corpse because of ‘maintaining the integrity of the crime scene’ or whatever the fuck you said, and now I’m done.”

She looks well and truly freaked out - Maryam’s a physics student from NYU who spends her spare time in the Lair running magical experiments involving the geomagnetic field, and is probably not old enough to drink legally yet, and Kady does feel kind of bad about making her wait with the body until they got here.

“Thanks, Maryam,” Kady says. “Seriously, good work - I owe you one, okay?”

Maryam nods, and then blushes a little. “Uh, yeah, you’re welcome, Kady, no problem. Okay, I’m - heading out.”

Maryam makes for the door, and Kady and Pete head toward the cross-section exit, where Maryam said she’d found the body. There’s a labyrinthine network of hallways and rooms in the Lair - at some point in the past, some enterprising hedge had melded together several abandoned subterranean buildings to make what would be a pretty good B-movie vampire lair or secret zombie lab (hence the name), and the cross-section exit is the place where the joins show: a gap was left between two of the buildings, creating a cavernous shaft about four stories deep bounded on two sides by cross-sections of the two unconnected buildings. There’s a manhole in the ceiling at the top, an enormous pipe running across the bottom, and multiple other exits available through the exposed levels of the buildings on either side. 

And there’s a body on the floor of the lowest level. Kady takes a deep breath, then flicks her fingers to send the glow ball up high into the air above them, cranking up its brightness until the room is filled with light. She puts the pizza box down on the ground and pulls out her phone - she doesn’t have a forensics team, but she can at least get photos of the scene and make some notes.

“Hold up,” she says to Pete, waving him back from walking any further into the room, and starts moving forward carefully, taking pictures as she goes. 

“You notice the wards are down?” she calls back to Pete. She has to raise her voice over the sound of water rushing through the pipe on the left side of the room.

“Someone took them down and left them down - sending a message, maybe,” Pete says. “Can I move now?”

“Yeah,” Kady says, staring down at the body. “Come take a look at him.” She lets the shadow of Sam Cunningham come forward in her mind - Sam’s seen a lot of bodies, and she can look at this one with the same stoic scrutiny as all the rest. “His throat’s been cut, but there’s almost no blood on the floor, so either someone did a hell of a clean-up job, or this is a secondary scene - they killed him somewhere else and dumped the body here. Hedges use this place all the time, they must have known he’d be found, and soon.”

“You know how much I love it when you go all True Detective - ” Pete says, and then stops in his tracks, looking down at the dead man’s face. “Shit. Shit, I know him.”

“A friend? Kady asks, stepping closer to him.

“No, no - just an acquaintance. His name’s - his name _was_ Davidson, he - uh, moved merchandise,” Pete says.

“Merchandise?”

“Magical merchandise of questionable provenance,” Pete says shiftily.

“So he was a fence,” Kady says.

“He could get you pretty much anything, but his specialty was magical creatures - you know, fortune-telling crows, fire salamanders, dryad hair, stuff like that,” Pete says, frowning.

Kady looks at him; there’s a sinking feeling in her stomach. “Dragon eggs?”

Pete stares back at her. “Fuck. _Fuck_! Yeah, maybe. You really think the Library-”

“I don’t know. And I really fucking hope not, but -” Kady says. 

She’s interrupted by a loud splashing noise, followed by a thunderous metallic clanging coming from the pipe next to them. They turn towards the noise just as a twenty-foot long white alligator shoves its way through a hole in the top of the pipe and slides to the ground with a wet, leathery smack.

It looks at them; Kady and Pete look at it.

The alligator opens its huge toothy maw and says, “I’m hungry.”

*

Oh shit, Eliot says, or at least tries to say.

The doorway’s gone, he’s alone in pitch-black darkness and he doesn’t even have the sound of his own voice to comfort himself. 

He reaches out, waving his hand stupidly around in the dark as though the door might still be just in front of him, but there’s nothing but emptiness.

Okay, okay, he says, talking out loud despite the lack of any actual ‘loudness’, get your shit together and do some fucking magic so that you can at least see where you are.

It helps to say it, helps even more to imagine Margo standing next to him, shaking her head at his dumbassery - he lifts his hands into position, but then a light comes on behind him, a disturbingly prosaic fluorescent glow, and Eliot turns around.

There’s a hallway behind him - a long empty corridor lit with industrial overhead lights and painted the shade of dingy green that only ends up on the walls of hospitals, prisons and high schools. The lights are coming on one by one, slowly illuminating the length of the hallway, until the last light flickers to life, revealing a plain gray door at the end.

Right, that’s not creepy at all, Eliot says. 

He shoots one more desperate look into the darkness, just in case the others happen to miraculously appear, then starts walking down the hallway. He can’t move all that fast - his entire right side is one big mass of fiery pain, and every time he takes a step it feels like knives are twisting deeper into his leg. When his physiotherapist told him that light exercise was a good idea, she definitely hadn’t meant a bout of Xtreme Spellcasting followed by serpentining around a giant monster dog. His cane is still lying uselessly in the grass next to the crossroads, of-fucking-course.

It’s probably only a few minutes, but it feels like a lot longer before he finally stumbles to a halt in front of the door. He was wrong, it’s not entirely plain - it has the outline of a storm-cloud etched into its dull paint.

Eliot reaches for the doorknob, and opens the door.

He walks into small dim room that looks like an interrogation room from an old cop procedural: a battered table with two chairs facing each other, no windows but a huge mirror stretching along the top half of one wall, an intercom panel and a beige phone hanging on the wall next to it.

There’s a man (not a man) pacing back and forth on the other side of room; he stops and looks up across the table at Eliot as he comes in. He’s bearded, handsome, radiates an aura of restrained power, but - 

“Leave the door open,” he says sharply.

Eliot does as he’s told, then takes a deep breath and walks a little further into the room. He gets halfway through the subtitles spell before it occurs to him to wonder if magic is even possible in the Underworld, but the pool of light appears in his hands without any issue.

_Hades, I presume?_ Eliot says.

The man (not a man) starts pacing again. “You know it’s been ages since anyone got this spell to work?”

_I’m here to -_ Eliot says, but Hades interrupts him.

He says, “I know why you’re here, Eliot Waugh from Berkett, Indiana.”

Maybe it’s the mention of Indiana, but Eliot is suddenly aware of the fact that he’s a complete mess - sweating and hunched over from the pain in his side and leg, covered with dirt from the crossroads - he glances at the mirror and yeah, also with blood on his face from the nosebleed -

He straightens himself up to his full height, gritting his teeth against the pain, because he’s filthy and bloody (and from Indiana) but he’s still a fucking magician and a king, and says, _I’m here to ask for Quentin Coldwater back. Please._

“You people,” Hades says, shaking his head. “You mortals. You’re all the same. Selfish, no perspective - do you know the kind of magic that you can do with a dragon egg? Do you know the kind of magic a _dragon_ can do?”

Eliot blinks. _I don’t -_

He doesn’t know what he was expecting exactly - someone like Ember maybe, archaic and whimsical and irrational, someone he would have to flatter and bullshit and plead an artful case to; this feels more like being back in school and getting lambasted by one of the stricter professors for turning in lazy work.

“And you destroyed it, turned it to ashes, just so you could come down here and ask for your dead boyfriend back. So you can have - what? A few more decades, at best?”

Eliot swallows hard, then jerks his chin up and says: _I’m hoping for at least five._

Hades barely gives his words a glance. “It’ll be over in the blink of an eye, either way. And then you’ll both be dead and back here, so what does it even matter?”

There’s something off about him though, something wrong - a kind of wild agitation just under the surface of his calm, some huge and terrible emotion barely being kept in check. Eliot’s pretty familiar with that feeling from the inside, but he has no fucking clue what could be causing it in a god. 

_If it doesn’t matter,_ Eliot says, trying to hide the tension that’s tightening his shoulders, _then why not just let Quentin go? What difference does it make?_

“Wow, you nearly caught me in that clever web of logic,” Hades says, deadpan. “Also, ‘let him go’? You really think _he’s_ the prisoner in this scenario?” He gestures at their cramped institutional surroundings, then raps his knuckles against the mirror on the wall as his pacing takes him past it. “He’s the one who escaped. This is pointless.”

No, no, he is too fucking close to get turned away now - a wave of panicked fury washes over Eliot, and he blurts out, _That’s fucking bullshit._

Hades stops pacing, and stares at him with cold, cold eyes.

_It’s not pointless, it’s - maybe you’ve been hanging around with dead people for too long, but an extra fifty years matters. A extra day matters, for fuck’s sake,_ Eliot says. His hands are shaking under the force of that stare, but he doesn’t give a shit. 

_What we do in our lives, the time we get? It fucking matters - or else we might as well all fling ourselves off a cliff right now. And the time Quentin gets? It matters to_ me. _So give him back._

Hades says, “You don’t understand what you’re asking for.”

_I understand that Q died helping people - including you assholes, by the way,_ Eliot says. _I heard about how you zapped him up to your reception desk and fed him cake and told him about the Seam, and then he fucking died getting rid of the monsters that were about to kick down your gate and fuck up your neighborhood._

A muscle twitches under Hades’ eye. “Ah, yes, the monsters. The ones you and your friends released upon the worlds?”

Eliot flinches at that, but presses on. _Yeah, okay, touché, but weren’t you the ones who created them in the first place? Quentin helped solve your little Frankensteinian problem, so why can’t you -_

“Look at the balls on you,” Hades says, his voice snapping like a whip. “Are you really so arrogant as to suggest that I _owe_ you my help? You call and I answer?”

_No,_ Eliot says, _no. I’m just - I’m asking -_

“Your friend Julia Wicker called for help,” Hades says, slowly, deliberately. “And my wife answered. And the creature you call ‘the monster’s sister’ murdered her.”

Eliot goes cold. He hadn’t - he hadn’t even thought - _Your wife? Persephone. Shit._ Shit, _I’m sorry._

He has almost no clear memories of anything that the monster did while it was in possession of his body. A few blurry flashes here and there, vague impressions of the monster’s thoughts - and then, of course, the nightmares where his hands are covered in blood, where he’s hurting people, hurting Quentin. Julia had said that it was the same for her.

_I’m sorry, I didn’t know - we didn’t know she was dead. Neither of us could remember what happened to her,_ Eliot says.

“Do you know what happens to gods, when they die?” Hades asks.

_No,_ Eliot says.

“Neither do I,” Hades says, and then smiles, bleak and awful, in the face of Eliot’s surprise. “No, we don’t know everything. Or see everything. All I know is that I’ll have to spend an eternity without her.”

Eliot breathes in and out, feels the ever-present tightness in his chest. He says, _And wouldn’t you do anything to bring her back if you could?_

Hades moves from across the room to directly in front of Eliot in a fraction of a second, inhumanly fast. His eyes are burning with fury, the whole room dark and seething with it, all the rage and grief and despair that he’s been keeping locked down suddenly unleashed. 

Eliot doesn’t look away, won’t let himself look away, but there’s a long moment where he imagines, very vividly, all the things that a god could do to you that would be worse than death. 

“Yes,” Hades says, “I would.”

Then he’s back on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall next to the phone with his arms crossed, all that pain once again hidden away. “Even if this works, he could choke on a grape tomorrow and die. Or you could.”

Eliot relaxes, just a bit. _That’s - weirdly specific. And yeah, I’ve seen that Nicolas Cage movie._

“I’m just saying, there are no guarantees,” Hades says.

_There are never any guarantees,_ Eliot says.

Hades gives him a long, inscrutable look, and then flicks a light-switch on the wall next to the mirror, which abruptly turns into a window as bright lights come on in the room on the other side of it - an identical, empty version of the room they’re standing in.

Hades takes the phone receiver off the wall and lifts it to his ear, then dials a number. He pauses, then speaks into the phone: “Quentin Coldwater, this is a collect call from Eliot Waugh. Do you accept the charges?”

He waits for a second, then hangs up the phone, turning to look through the window into the adjacent room. Eliot turns along with him, and -

And in the other room, the door opens, and Quentin walks in. 

He’s wearing a black shirt and a black hoodie, and his hair’s short, the way it had been the last time Eliot had seen him, during those precious seconds in the park when Eliot had slipped out from under the monster’s control. 

But he’s - faded and colorless and blurry somehow, like a character from a old black-and-white movie who’s crossed sideways into reality, and his expression is utterly blank.

Eliot feels all the breath whoosh out of him, feels his legs goes wobbly, and he has to reach out and grab the table to keep from sitting hard on the floor. Q, he says - silently, silently and invisibly, fuck - and he leans against the table with his hip and jerks his hands back up to redo the subtitles spell.

“Don’t bother. He can’t see us or hear us,” Hades says. 

Eliot doesn’t look at him, can’t tear his eyes away from Quentin’s face. 

“So - let’s hear it,” Hades says.

_What?_ Eliot says.

“The song,” Hades says. 

Eliot manages to turn his head this time. _What song?_

“A song for a life,” Hades says. “A song to melt my heart, to convince me to give you your second chance. Didn’t you do the reading before you came down here?”

_I know the story,_ Eliot says. He knows the ending too, knows that it ends in failure, in tragedy - _But it wasn’t supposed to be just me all alone, I thought -_

He had thought that it would be Alice, or Julia even, who would do any of the important parts. Despite what Hades might think, Quentin isn’t his boyfriend, isn’t Eliot’s at all - Julia had told him that he and Alice had reconciled, right before they’d gone to the Mirror World. All Eliot really has is one night that they had been too fucked-up to remember afterwards, the half-real memories of some other Eliot’s life, and that squandered moment when Quentin had said, “What if we gave it a shot?” and looked at him like Eliot was - like he was - 

There’s a cold, creeping fear twisting up through his belly, because of course, of course the universe would find a way to fuck them over, of course he’s traded away the one _goddamn motherfucking thing he needs_ (some dark, hopeless part of him is whispering: see, you should have known this would never work, you’ve fucked this up like you fuck everything up, at least you got to see him one last time) -

“You’re the one who’s here,” Hades says flatly.

_How can I sing if I don’t have a voice?_ Eliot says, trying to keep from flying apart in terror and frustration. Q is right there, he’s _right there_ , just on the other side of the glass -

Hades looks him up and down, arching an ironic eyebrow. “Did you bring a lyre?”

_Must have left it in my other pants,_ Eliot says. _Look, I can do a music spell -_

“That’s not how this works,” Hades says, shaking his head, starting to turn away, and Eliot steps closer, staying in his line of vision, says, _Wait, wait, wait,_ please - 

His gaze slides back to Quentin again, helplessly, and he thinks, what if -

_What if Q helped me?_ Eliot says.

Hades glances through the window at Quentin, and then looks back at Eliot. “You know he’s mostly - not here.” 

Mostly dead is slightly alive, Eliot thinks, a little hysterically, and says, _He’ll help me, I know he will. We’re a team, we’re - parts of a whole._

Hades gives him a curious look, rubs at his beard for a second.

He says, “I’ll allow it. But -” he points at Eliot, “This isn’t the time for a teary reunion, got that? If I don’t hear singing in thirty seconds, I’m kicking your ass back topside.”

_Got it,_ Eliot says. Sure, no fucking pressure or anything.

Hades presses a button on the intercom on the wall, then flicks another switch next to the window; the overhead lights brighten to match the ones in Quentin’s room.

In the other room, Quentin blinks and turns his head to look at them, but that’s the extent of his reaction - he doesn’t move from his spot in front of the door, and his distant, neutral expression doesn’t so much as flicker.

Eliot steps forward, swallowing; shoves down all the things he wants to say - not now, not yet. _Q,_ he says, _I need your help._

Eliot might not have much faith in his own ability to get Quentin the fuck out of here, but his faith in Quentin - Quentin’s strength and his courage and his willingness to step up and save Eliot’s ass - yeah, Eliot would bet the farm on that, every fucking time.

Quentin looks at him for a long moment, tilting his head slightly, then says, “Okay.”

His voice sounds faint and staticky, but Eliot’s not sure if it’s caused by the intercom or whatever weird in-between state he’s in. 

_It’s time for the big musical number, but - I’m kind of short of a voice here,_ Eliot says. _I’ll do the karaoke spell, but I need you to do all the vocals, okay?_ Maybe it’s a good thing he doesn’t have a voice, because if he did it would be shaking so badly that he’d be pretty much useless anyway. 

“Sure,” Quentin says, flat. Eliot might as well be asking him to pass the salt.

_Okay - okay, great, thanks,_ Eliot says. 

He drops his hands by his sides, breaking the subtitles spell; and then raises them again for the karaoke spell. (He and Margo had watched _Moulin Rouge!_ a few weeks ago; well, they’d watched half of it - Margo had said, “Why are you doing this to yourself?” and Eliot had said, “Shut the fuck up, Baz Luhrmann is a balm to my soul,” but then he’d broken down during the opening bars of “The Show Must Go On”, and Margo had made him turn it off.)

Eliot casts the karaoke spell, and then redoes the subtitles spell. The music starts, and Eliot takes a breath, waits - 

“My gift is my song,” Quentin’s voice comes through the intercom, quiet and thready and entirely off-key, because Quentin can’t carry a tune in a bucket, can’t carry a tune to (literally) save his life, and fuck, _fuck,_ Eliot loves him - 

_And this one’s for you,_ Eliot says, singing the next line along with him.

Eliot’s smiling despite himself, despite everything, and he steps closer to the window, closer to Quentin, because fuck Hades, this is - if Q can’t hear him, at least he can see Eliot, see that he _would_ sing to him, see that he means every goddamn word.

“Hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind, that I’ve put down in words -” Quentin sings, and - his expression hasn’t changed, but he seems more _there_ somehow, brighter and more solid around the edges.

_\- how wonderful life is, now you’re in the world,_ Eliot finishes the line, and Quentin - blinks, and then looks at him, really _looks_ for the first time, instead of just staring blankly, and there’s definitely more color seeping into his face and hands. 

Eliot takes another step closer, then another, all through the verse section, ignoring the pain in his leg, until he’s standing right in front of the window separating their rooms, his cupped hands bumping against the glass. _You see, I’ve forgotten if they’re_ brown _or they’re blue,_ Eliot says, changing the line and then shaking his head in theatrical denial, and miracle of miracles, Quentin’s mouth lifts up at one corner in a small smile.

Eliot grins back at him, puts it all into the next line. _See what the thing is, what I really mean - yours are the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen._

Eliot’s own fucking eyes are starting to blur with tears; he’s trying to blink them back, trying to hold it together - and then Quentin starts walking forward across his room, until he’s standing in front of the window, looking back at Eliot, barely a foot of space between them.

Quentin’s voice is louder now, stronger, and when he sings the next line, “- how wonderful life is, now you’re in the world,” he actually - he sounds like he _means_ it.

And Eliot can’t take it anymore: he lets his hands come apart, lets the subtitles spell break, and presses his palms flat against the cold surface of the window, says the last few lines silently - Q will still be able to tell what he’s saying, will see his mouth shaping the words: while _you’re_ in the world - 

Quentin lifts his hand and puts it on the glass, palm to palm with Eliot’s hand.

He looks _real,_ he looks present and solid and wholly, completely himself -

“ _Eliot,_ ” Quentin says, and he’s staring up at Eliot like - like he had that day in the park, like Eliot is a fucking revelation. 

Q, I - Eliot says, but it’s too much, it all gets clogged up in his throat (I love you, I’m sorry, please come back), and he’s still fucking silent, goddamnit - 

Then the room goes dim and shadowy again, and Eliot is staring back at his own wrecked reflection in the mirror. 

No, he yells, spinning towards Hades; his body shrieks with pain at the sudden movement, but he has to - he can’t - 

“Turn around and walk out of here,” Hades says, and his face is like stone.

Eliot forces his hands through the subtitles spell as fast as he can, says, _No, no, wait, please -_

“ _Listen_ to me,” Hades says. “Turn around and walk back the way you came. Once you’ve started don’t turn around, or look back, or try to talk to him, or reach for him. One more time, in case there’s any confusion - _don’t look back_ , until you’re outside with dirt under your feet and sky over your head. Do you understand?”

_Yes,_ Eliot says. He’s still half-crying, and he blinks hard, tries to stop his breath from hitching. _Yes, I understand. Thank you._

“Don’t thank me yet,” Hades says. “He’ll follow you or he won’t.”

Eliot hesitates, then says, _If there’s anything I can do to help you get your wife back, somehow -_

“Get out,” Hades says. “Get the fuck _out_.”

Eliot drops his hands and turns around, makes his slow, limping way towards the door. As he passes through it, he hears a loud crash behind him: the sound of a two-way mirror shattering and sliding into pieces onto the floor.

He walks back down the hallway, and when it comes to an end he walks into the darkness, step after step into the void. He can’t hear anyone behind him, but he tells himself that that doesn’t mean anything, keeps walking forward in a haze of pain and terrified hope.

Finally he sees a light in the distance - daylight, coming from the arched doorway that he’d walked through from the crossroads. 

Eliot stops just before the doorway with the sudden, awful thought: if Quentin’s not behind him, shouldn’t he try to send Alice or Julia through, while the door’s still open, while they still have a chance? He can’t see anyone through the doorway - the crossroads looks empty, as far as he can tell in the dim morning light - but if he knew that Quentin wasn’t there -

For a second he’s frozen in indecisive agony - 

\- and then Eliot shakes his head, because - no, fuck no, this was a one shot kind of deal, and Hades had said it - either Q’s followed him or he hasn’t. Q’s already made his choice, and Eliot has to trust that; this - now? This is up to Eliot to fuck up, or not.

Eliot thinks: _and you told him you’d be braver_ , and walks through the doorway.

He keeps walking, slowly, painfully, until he’s standing in the middle of the crossroads. It’s a cold gray dawn, the storm having transmuted into a windy, driving rainstorm, and he’s immediately soaked. 

Eliot stares down at the muddy ground with his fists clenched, and tries to force himself to turn around. He’s cold and shaking and he can’t fucking move; getting through the doorway had used up the last of his courage. 

As long as he doesn’t move, then he still has hope, then he still doesn’t _know_ -

“Hey.”

Eliot turns around so fast he nearly falls over.

Quentin’s standing there, in front of the now doorway-less hillside, staring at Eliot with wide eyes. 

He looks tired and rumpled and bewildered, and his hair is getting plastered to his face in the rain.

And he is indisputably, incredibly, gloriously _alive_.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my head, the song playing over the final scene is "Out of the Woods", because Quentin Coldwater deserves nothing less than to come back from the dead to the dulcet sounds of Taylor Swift.
> 
> The chapter title is a line from _Hadestown_.
> 
> "Jenny from the Block" is a song by Jennifer Lopez.
> 
> Marina's "Be seeing you!" is a reference to both _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ and _The Prisoner_.
> 
> As far as I know, there is no actual "Berkett, Indiana".
> 
> Eliot's "It matters to me" is inspired by Rory Williams from _Doctor Who_ yelling "she matters to me!" about Amy.
> 
> The Nicolas Cage movie Eliot mentions is _City of Angels_.
> 
> The song Eliot and Quentin sing is the _Moulin Rouge!_ version of "Your Song" by Elton John.
> 
> "Mostly dead is slightly alive," is a line from _The Princess Bride_.
> 
> Eliot and Quentin's scene with the glass between them is most definitely inspired by the famous Kirk/Spock scene in the _Wrath of Khan_ , and about a dozen other shows and movies. Someone made a vid of it once: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZLRAmqQ7ng


	5. Five by Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She stops, nailing Julia with an iron stare, a High King stare. “This is fucked up, you know that, right? This is fucked up, and it is actively fucking us up, because Quentin is dead and gone and the longer we spend trying to bring him back and failing, the harder it gets to actually deal with it.”
> 
> Julia takes a breath. Counts - _1, 2, 3_ ; lets it out. “I’m not giving up yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've added extra tags for depression, suicide and alcohol/drug abuse - please see the end notes for a full description of the reason for those tags.

Quentin breathes in.

He’s standing in mud, in the early morning light of - somewhere he doesn’t recognize, two dirt roads crossing each other, low trees on either side and the edge of a cliff in the distance. 

He’s getting rained on.

A cold wind is tossing sheets of rain into his face, soaking his hair and clothes; and he’s fucking exhausted, the kind of gritty-eyed, grinding exhaustion that comes from multiple all-nighters, there’s a tension headache squeezing at his temples and his stomach is tight and nervous, and it all feels very familiar, but he can’t figure out why -

Someone’s standing near the center of the crossroads, his back turned towards Quentin.

Eliot. Eliot, thank god. 

Quentin’s shoulders drop with relief - he doesn’t know where the hell he is, but at least Eliot’s here with him - but then two seconds later, a jolt of fear shoots through him, all his muscles tensing back up: no, no, remember - the _Monster_. 

And then.

And then he remembers everything. 

Margo, returning in triumph with the ice-axes. The Secret Sea in Fillory. That fucking flower. Getting the monsters out of Julia and Eliot, Eliot bleeding on the ground, the incorporate bond, the Seam in the Mirror World, and - 

Everett had broken the mirror. And Quentin had fixed it. 

He remembers what came after that, too. 

Fuck. Fuck. Holy motherfucking _fuck_. 

It’s like - waking up from a bad dream, like surfacing, his head breaking through water to air long after he’d resigned himself to going under for the last time - he’s breathing too hard, staring at everything around him that is just - so fucking beautiful - the churned up dirt, the dull sky, the dark line of Eliot’s shoulders and his bowed head - 

Quentin reaches up to push his hair out of his face, and his hand is trembling. His hand is trembling, and there’s a hole in the toe of his left sock, and he’s freezing and wet and _alive_. 

He’s fucking alive, and that’s Eliot standing in front of him, not the Monster, Eliot alive and whole and not possessed, not bleeding to death, Eliot who Quentin has just followed out of the goddamn Underworld, and that’s - that’s -

Eliot hasn’t moved, is standing still as a statue with his back to Quentin, his shoulders hunched and his hands clenched into fists at his sides. 

“Hey,” Quentin says, calling out over the wind, and Eliot turns around. He whips his body around so fast that he staggers and has to catch himself, and then he stares.

This is probably the moment when Quentin should say something, like, cool or witty, some off-the-cuff ‘look who’s back, bitch’ one-liner, or maybe something profound and meaningful - but he’s got nothing.

All he can do is stare back at Eliot, who - who looks terrible, his face stricken, all the color washing out of it as he stands stock-still and gapes at Quentin. 

Then Eliot just folds up like his legs can’t hold him anymore; he lands hard on his knees, stretching out one hand to catch himself (and Quentin thinks, for a second, of the emotion bottles, the way Eliot had fallen like his strings had been cut every time), but then Quentin rushes forward because shit, shit, he’s an idiot, Eliot’s _hurt_ , isn’t he? His memories of the Underworld are odd, distant, like something that happened to someone else, but he remembers Eliot limping like it hurt to walk, remembers blood smeared on his face - 

Quentin drops to his knees in front of Eliot, says, “Eliot, fuck, are you okay? Are you bleeding? Are you - tell me what’s -” 

He’s grabbing at Eliot’s shoulder with one hand, trying to steady him, and frantically patting at Eliot’s torso with the other in case there’s another massive stab wound or some fucking thing under Eliot’s multiple layers of clothing - 

But he’s half-wrestling Eliot to do it, because Eliot won’t stop moving - he keeps reaching for Quentin, his hands leaving glancing touches on Quentin’s arms and shoulders and waist, before jerking back again; and he hasn’t answered Quentin yet -

“El, tell me if you’re hurt -” Quentin says, and then looks up into Eliot’s face. 

Eliot’s crying, silently, and his mouth is moving like he’s trying to speak but nothing’s coming out, and Quentin remembers: _I’m kind of short of a voice here_.

Quentin says, his own voice cracking, “I’m sorry, I can’t - Eliot, I can’t understand you, can you do that spell again, with the words?” but he doesn’t think Eliot’s even registering what he’s saying.

Eliot touches Quentin’s face, his fingers brushing along the side of Quentin’s jaw, and then yanks his hand back like Quentin might burn him; the way Eliot keeps pulling away is fucking breaking Quentin’s heart, and since he can’t find any evidence that Eliot is secretly bleeding out, Quentin does what he’s been waiting and hoping for the chance to do for months now: he throws his arms around Eliot and holds on tight.

Eliot freezes, his whole body tensing; and then his arms come up and he’s hugging Quentin back, hard.

“It’s okay, we’re alright, just breathe, just -” Quentin says, letting words tumble out of his mouth without any input from his brain. Eliot’s face is pressed against Quentin’s neck, and Quentin can feel his chest shuddering with each breath; Quentin closes his eyes and pulls Eliot closer and thinks: if he had to live in this moment forever, kneeling in the mud and the rain with Eliot holding him like this, that would be - that would be okay, he’d be okay with that.

Eventually Eliot’s breathing evens out a little, and Quentin leans back and lifts his hands up to cup Eliot’s face between them. Eliot blinks at him with wild, reddened eyes. “Eliot. What the _fuck_ is going on? Where are we? Are you alright?”

Eliot’s eyes go even wider and wilder somehow, and then he’s shoving himself unsteadily to his feet, yanking Quentin up with him, and looking around as though he’s expecting something to come leaping out of the trees at them at any moment.

“What, what?” Quentin says, raising his hands into position to start throwing out battle magic, just in case.

Eliot casts a rapid spell, and the pool of light that Quentin had seen him use in the Underworld appears in his hands. 

_There was a dog_ , Eliot says, twisting around awkwardly to stare into the trees, and Quentin has to turn with him to keep reading his words. _A huge fucking monster dog, we’ve got to get out of here -_

“A dog?” Quentin says, then it clicks. “Wait, Cerberus?”

_We’re not on a first-name basis, Q, I wasn’t playing fetch with it_ , Eliot says, peevish and distracted, and Quentin - 

“I - god, I missed you so much,” Quentin says, smiling at him, stupidly fond; and yeah, _so_ not the time, not if they’re about to get jumped by a three-headed dog, but it’s so fucking good to have Eliot back, he feels half-drunk with the relief of it.

Eliot looks at him, says, _Q, you - you have no idea -_

\- and then Penny appears a couple dozen feet away, at the edge of the tree-line.

He stares at them, his mouth dropping open. “Holy shit.”

_Oh, thank Christ_ , Eliot says. _Okay, let’s go, get us out of here!_

“Holy _shit_ ,” Penny says, not moving. He looks rough, tired and muddy and scraped up; there’s a white gauze bandage peeking out through the open neck of his shirt. “You did it. You actually -”

_Yes, I know, I know, but let’s Travel now and talk later, come on!_ Eliot says, and Penny nods and then appears again directly in front of them. 

He’s staring so hard that it’s making Quentin nervous. He tries for a smile, says, “Hey, Penny.”

“Hey, Quentin,” Penny says, quietly. Eliot leans over and takes Quentin’s hand, which isn’t really necessary since Penny is reaching out to grab both of their arms, but Quentin’s not going to argue. 

They Travel, Quentin’s already uneasy stomach lurching in complaint, and then they’re standing in the infirmary at Brakebills, in the middle of what sounds like a shouting match between Dean Fogg and a bloody, disheveled Alice.

“- go ahead and expel us, as if anyone here gives a fuck!” Alice is yelling, staring at Fogg like she’s trying to murder him with her brain. Fogg looks apoplectic, Julia and Margo both seem nanoseconds away from aiding and abetting Alice’s potential homicide despite sitting in hospital beds, covered in mud and bandages, and Professor Lipson is watching the whole thing with her arms crossed and an expression like she’s seriously considering a career change.

Then Alice stops, turns - actually, everyone in the room is turning, five stunned faces all staring at Quentin and Eliot and Penny, as they stand there dripping onto the floor. No - they’re all staring at Quentin, and he stares back, frozen - it’s like he’s accidentally wandered into a play, and now he can’t remember his lines.

“Jesus Christ,” Fogg whispers.

“No fucking kidding,” Margo says, and laughs, then covers her mouth with her hand, her eyes huge. 

Quentin looks at Alice. Her face is slowly twisting like she’s in pain, like looking at him hurts her, and it’s like - like the last time he saw her - _fuck_ , like the way she’d looked at him as Penny dragged her out of the room -

“Alice,” Quentin says, his voice shaking, and Alice - doesn’t move. And doesn’t move.

Julia says, “Q. Oh my god, _Q_ -” and then she’s launching herself out of the hospital bed and limping across the room towards him as fast as she can. 

Quentin is - he’s still holding Eliot’s hand, and Eliot lets go, steps away as Julia flings herself into Quentin’s arms. 

Julia’s sobbing, crying so hard that she can’t talk, and Quentin holds her close and says, “Jules, hey - Jules, it’s okay, it’s okay,” but he can feel his own eyes welling up, and then Margo’s there too, one arm wrapped around Eliot’s waist but hugging Quentin and Julia with the other one. She reaches up to pet the back of his head and says into his ear, “Fuck me, would you look what the cat dragged in,” but her voice is thick with tears; Quentin half-laughs, half-sobs, and hides his face in Julia’s hair. 

He feels the tentative press of Eliot’s hand on his shoulder, there and then gone, and Quentin raises his head as Julia pulls away - she’s still crying, but she’s smiling too, and she steps back towards Penny and takes his hand in hers without even looking, and Penny stares down at their joined hands like it’s a minor miracle all its own. 

Alice is standing in front of him - she still looks white and anguished and - and furious, Quentin realizes, but then she’s hugging him, her arms wrapped tightly around him, and he hugs her back, relieved, thankful - 

Then Alice pulls away, steps back, putting an arm’s length of space between them, her eyes dry and burning into him; Quentin’s hands drop to his sides, empty again, and he doesn’t - he’s not sure what -

“Not to be a buzzkill,” Penny says, “but we’re going to check that that actually is Quentin, right? Like the real deal, shade-and-all Quentin?”

Julia shoots him a glare, and Eliot casts the pool of light spell and says, _It’s him_.

Penny shrugs, looking unhappy. “Hey, I’m glad he’s back, and it - it _feels_ like him - your wards are leaking around the edges, by the way - but this seems like the kind of thing we want to be really fucking sure about.” 

“He’s right, you should check,” Quentin says, clearing his throat and swiping his sleeve across his eyes. “I mean, I think I’m - you know, me, but that’s probably also what evil impostor Quentin would say, so -”

“Excellent idea,” Fogg says, finally shaking off his stunned expression. “Quarantine is probably in order -”

Nearly everyone starts objecting, loudly, so Quentin raises his voice over all of them to say, “Okay, fine, but someone needs to get Eliot a bed, he’s hurt - and Alice, you’ve got blood on you, are you okay?” 

Lipson hurries forward, while Alice frowns, crossing her arms and not looking at him, and Eliot says, _I’m okay, it’s just more of the same, my side, this fucking leg - but what the hell happened to the rest of you? Bambi, your arm -_

Things start moving very quickly - there’s a babble of explanations and arguments that Quentin has trouble following: Margo says, “We got caught up in a bacchanal, but the shitty murderous part, not the fun part,” Alice and Eliot both try to brush off Lipson - and both fail and end up in hospital beds of their own, Julia latches onto Quentin’s arm and vetoes the quarantine idea so firmly that Fogg gives in and lets her tug Quentin down onto her bed, and they sit there together, Julia clutching his hand, while Fogg and Lipson run their tests to make sure that Quentin is - who he’s supposed to be. What he’s supposed to be.

Eventually Lipson looks at Fogg and says with a shrug, “I can’t think of anything else, can you? As far as I can tell, he checks out.”

“Yes - as far as we can tell,” Fogg says, tilting his head and staring at Quentin with unnervingly clinical detachment.

Quentin tries to keep his shoulders from hunching up, and holds Julia’s hand a little tighter. Everyone is still staring at him, and combined with the hospital setting, it’s kind of reminding him of - he pushes that thought away. No, this is nothing like that.

“So what was it like?” Lipson asks, leaning forward eagerly.

“What?” Quentin says.

“Dying and coming back from the dead,” Lipson says, like it should be obvious.

Maybe it should have been, but - he hadn’t expected to have to _talk_ about it, somehow. At least, not yet - but the room’s gone quiet, waiting for him to answer.

He says, “Oh. I - um. It was -”

He stops, and Lipson says, “Do you remember all of it?”

“Yeah,” Quentin says, and swallows. Alice is out of her hospital bed again, standing next to Julia’s bed to talk to Penny about something; now she’s staring down hard at the floor while Penny glances between her and Quentin. Eliot’s snuck over to sit on the edge of Margo’s bed, but they’ve both turned to look at him with solemn eyes. 

Julia leans in close, bumping her shoulder against his. “You don’t have to talk about this right now,” she says quietly. “Or ever.”

“No, it’s okay,” Quentin says. “Uh, I remember going to the Mirror World, to throw the monsters into the Seam. Everett broke the mirror, so - I did a spell to fix it. And -”

He can’t - say it, suddenly, has to take a deep breath, then another. “And - I got hit by the ricochet.”

“You died,” Alice says, lifting her head to stare straight at him. “You died right in front of me.”

Quentin looks up at her from the bed, feeling sick to his stomach. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you?” Alice says.

He stares at her, his whole body going hot then cold; he doesn’t - he has no fucking idea what to say to that, isn’t even sure exactly what she means - 

Julia squeezes his hand, starts to open her mouth, but then Lipson says impatiently, “Whatever, who cares, what happened next?” and Alice drops her eyes, her jaw clenching tight.

Quentin watches her for a long moment, but she doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look up, so he turns to Lipson instead - it’s much easier to answer to her impersonal curiosity.

“I was in the Underworld - um, in the elevator,” he says, glancing at Julia, who nods, “and Penny was there. The other Penny.”

“How is he?” Alice asks softly, still looking at the floor.

“Good, I think,” Quentin says. “He seemed - different, but good. And - we talked -” He stops - he doesn’t want to tell them what he and Penny talked about, doesn’t want to tell them about seeing his own funeral, or whatever it had been, the unbelievable pain on all of their faces - it’s all too - 

Under the bright lights of the infirmary, with everyone staring at him - for a second, it’s too much like being back in the hospital, those times when he - 

“Hey,” Julia says, worried, but Quentin shakes his head. He’s not - he refuses to freak out right now, this isn’t the same thing at all, he just needs to cowboy the fuck up - he swallows the nausea down and keeps going. They’re his friends. They just want to know what happened. 

Well - Lipson probably wants to write a paper on actual-death experiences, and Fogg looks like he’s still deciding whether he should shut Quentin up in the no-magic quarantine room.

“We talked. And then he gave me a metropass -” he clarifies, off of the multitude of confused looks, “it’s a pass that lets you move on from the Underworld to - whatever’s next. So I -”

He stops again, but this time it’s because this is where things get fuzzy. “Look, what I remember from the Underworld, it doesn’t feel - it’s like remembering a dream, you know? Like - the shape of the things that happened is there, but not exactly what you were thinking or feeling or why you decided to do what you did -”

No one says anything - Alice is looking at him now, and her eyes are wet, and this time it’s Quentin who looks away, stares down at the bed, where his free hand is gripping a knot of blanket and sheets like it’s a life preserver.

“Uh, anyway,” Quentin says. “I got the metropass, so Penny showed me the doorway - the place to walk through so you can move on, and I - walked through.”

Julia is grabbing his hand so hard it hurts. He tries to smile at her, says, “And - I don’t remember this part very well, but I think there was a pig?”

There’s a short silence, then Lipson says, “Did you just say a pig?”

“See, I know that doesn’t sound right, but - yeah, I swear,” Quentin says, and lets go of the bed-sheets to stretch his arm out like he’s telling a fish story. “A really big pig.”

“Coldwater. Are you fucking with us?” Margo says.

“No! That’s what I - okay, just forget it. The next thing I remember, someone called my name and I - I stepped off the path,” Quentin says, and then freezes, because - because that’s important, isn’t it -

“And then what?” Lipson asks.

“What?” Quentin says, looking up.

She waves a ‘hurry-it-up’ hand at him. “Someone called your name?”

“Um, yeah. Someone said, ‘Quentin Coldwater, you have a collect call from Eliot Waugh,’” Quentin says. “Okay, that doesn’t sound right either -”

There’s a clanging noise, and everyone turns to look at Eliot, who’s kicking the metal leg of Margo’s hospital bed to get their attention. _No, that’s right - that was what Hades said._

He continues, looking unusually self-conscious, _There was kind of a retro thing going on - also I think gods have weird senses of humor._ He sits up straight and stares at Quentin. _Which reminds me - you have to promise to never eat grapes again._

“Okay?” Quentin says.

_No, seriously. You have to promise. Please. Right now_ , Eliot says.

Quentin blinks at him. “I - promise to never eat grapes again.”

Eliot relaxes, leaning back against the wall behind the bed. _Thank you. Me too - I’m never eating grapes again either, I mean. I’ll explain later._

“Right,” Quentin says. “So - I heard my name, and then I opened a door and walked into a - it looked like an interrogation room from _Law and Order_ , or something? And then -” He waves a hand towards Eliot, “- then Eliot was there, on the other side of the glass in the next room, and he - um, sang to me.”

Quentin gets a series of blank looks from everyone except Eliot. “Or I sang to him, I guess, but - it was, you know, a song for Hades in the Underworld, like in the myth -” His face is suddenly hot - fuck, maybe he shouldn’t have brought up the singing, he hadn’t really thought about how - personal it had been until he said it out loud, and now the memory is fresh in his mind again, Eliot leaning forward with his hands pressed against the glass, his expression just - naked, pleading - 

He sneaks a glance at Eliot, but Eliot doesn’t seem embarrassed, or annoyed; Eliot’s looking back at him with soft eyes, and Quentin flushes deeper, feels the burn go down his neck and chest. He shouldn’t - he can’t read too much into it, Eliot had been trying to bring him back from the fucking dead, of course things had gotten - intense.

_It was a team effort_ , Eliot says.

“But - Eliot, what happened to your voice?” Quentin asks.

_Oh_ , Eliot says, his eyes dropping down to his hands, the pale glow of the words rising from them. _I traded it for something important. Something I needed._

“What did you -”

Margo’s shaking her head at him and mouthing ‘later’, and Quentin shuts up.

_Don’t worry about it_ , Eliot says. _It was worth it._

“Okay,” Quentin says slowly, because that’s super vague and suspicious as shit, but he trusts Margo - later. “So, the glass broke between our rooms, and I climbed through and followed Eliot back to - um, back to the world, I guess.” 

“That’s it?” Lipson says.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Quentin says, confused by the weird, uncertain looks he’s getting from everyone. “Seriously, that’s all I remember, I’m not like - hiding any traumatic afterlife memories or anything. At least I don’t think I am.” He really fucking hopes that there’s no repressed memories lying in wait to inconveniently announce themselves, because frankly, he’s got enough very much un-repressed traumatic memories as it is.

Next to him, Julia says, “No one thinks you’re hiding anything, exactly, it’s just - it’s just that it’s been almost six months.”

He turns to stare at her. “What?”

“You’ve been - gone for almost six months,” Julia says, and her voice is so fucking gentle. “It’s April.”

“Oh,” Quentin says, faintly. “Oh. Shit. I figured it’d been at least a few weeks, but - I know time moves differently down there. I don’t - I don’t _remember_ being anywhere else -”

Julia’s watching him and biting her lip, and Alice is shifting from foot to foot, twisting her hands in front of her.

“There’s something we forgot to test,” Fogg says abruptly, and Quentin jerks his head towards him. “Can you do magic?”

Quentin’s breath seizes in his throat - he hasn’t tried yet, he doesn’t _know_ \- if he’s gotten his life back but lost magic, he - how can he - and he feels a crashing, visceral surge of sympathy for Julia, who’s spent the past few months with magic back in the world for everyone but her (except that wasn’t the last few months, was it, that was _last year_ ) - 

Quentin whips his hands up, but Julia grabs them before he has the chance to cast anything. “Wait, wait, one second - start with something easy, and bring it down like, five notches from what you’d usually do, okay? There’s been a huge increase in the level of ambient magic, and now every spell has a kick to it that wasn’t there before, even the simple ones.”

“Julia,” Quentin says, realizing, “can you -”

“Yeah.” Julia smiles at him, small but radiant, and lets go of his hands to move her own through a spell, ending with her palm turned up, a miniature ball of flame hovering over it. “Not a goddess anymore, but at least I’m back in the game.”

“Jules, that’s - that’s amazing,” Quentin says, grinning at her, even as the panicky fear is rising up in him fast and certain that this is it, this is going to be the price for coming back, as if he and Julia are on a seesaw and only one of them can be up at the same time - it’s a selfish, shitty thought, irrational too, because that’s not how magic works.

Quentin lets out a long, slow breath, then casts the same spell as Julia, trying to hold back the way she’d said, even if every inch of him is screaming to throw fucking everything behind it, just let it work, please - 

He turns his palm up - and a ball of fire appears over it, bigger and rougher around the edges than Julia’s, but there, there, _thank fucking god_ \- he looks up at Julia, half-laughing with relief, and she’s beaming back at him, moving her hand so that it’s side by side with his, two identical globes burning over each of them.

“Wonder twin powers, activate,” Margo whispers loudly to Eliot.

Quentin looks at Alice, still smiling, giddy - she smiles back at him for one bright moment, before looking away again.

He curls his fingers shut to make the fire vanish and says, “I can tell what you mean about the kick.” It’s a sensation like - reaching to push open a heavy door and having it swing wide open with almost no effort. 

“The new level of ambient is shaking everything up,” Julia says, “it’s the only reason we got the spell -” She cuts herself off, glancing at Fogg and Lipson.

“Yes, you’re all very discreet now, after you went ahead and caused a minor earthquake and lit up every thaumaturgical meter on the planet. Just because you won’t tell me exactly what spell you used doesn’t mean I don’t have a fairly accurate guess,” Fogg says. “There are only about a half-dozen that it could be, and each and every one of them is so goddamn dangerous that I can barely believe that you didn’t just leave behind a giant crater where a mountain used to be - or create five new Niffins.”

“What?” Quentin says, snapping his head around to look at Julia.

She doesn’t look back, but stares flatly up at Fogg instead, the ball of fire still spinning over her hand. “But that’s not what happened, is it? It fucking _worked_.”

Fogg looks from Julia to Quentin, and for the first time, his gaze softens a little. “Yes, it did.”

“Fuck yeah it did,” Margo says, then turns serious. “But - everyone gets that what we did tonight? It can’t leave this room.” She looks at Alice and adds, “Except for Kady, obviously. If anyone asks, Quentin was never dead, he was just lost in the Mirror World, like Harriet last year, and we got him back the same way.” 

Lipson narrows her eyes. “Wait, why?”

“Because we fucking _brought someone back from the dead_ , and people are gonna want to know how we did it, and we don’t have enough resurrection cupcakes for the rest of the class,” Margo says, rolling her eyes.

“You don’t want it getting out that it was Brakebills students conducting dangerous, reckless magic and causing earthquakes in Greece,” Julia says. She closes her hand, extinguishing the ball of fire; she’s watching Fogg and Lipson carefully.

Fogg smiles thinly, but nods in agreement; Lipson just crosses her arms. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You think you’re going to be able to keep pulling off something this massive a secret?”

“We can if everyone keeps their mouths shut,” Penny says.

Lipson shakes her head, takes a step back, and then Alice says, “Quentin saved your life. That time you blitzed through a battery’s worth of magic in New York and then nearly took a header off a building? You owe him.” 

“That was - I didn’t -” Lipson gives Alice a dark look, says, “I was in a bad fucking place, okay, that wasn’t -”

“Hey, hey, no, you don’t owe me, it’s not the kind of thing you owe someone for,” Quentin says, and Lipson looks at him. “No, it’s okay - trust me, I know all about standing on the edge of rooftops.”

He wishes he hadn’t said it as soon as it leaves his mouth, it’s a little too close to - to everything he doesn’t want to think about right now. He doesn’t let himself look at anyone but Lipson, who’s staring at him, chewing on her lip.

“Fine,” she says finally, “I guess we’re activating the Cone of fucking Silence on this one. Now - it’s the middle of the night, so if you’re staying in my infirmary, you’re sleeping, got it? Or you can take your slumber party somewhere else.”

There’s a loud discussion about sleeping arrangements that’s mostly everyone trying to out-stubborn everybody else; after they get yelled at by the nurse for being too noisy and trying to move the beds, they end up dragging in cots for Quentin and Penny, with Penny next to Julia and Quentin in between Julia and Eliot. Quentin’s sitting on his cot, watching Eliot use his telekinesis to slowly slide Margo’s bed closer to his, Margo egging him on, when Alice comes up to him and says, “Uh, hey.”

“Hey,” Quentin says, looking up at her. Alice is staring down at the phone in her hands, turning it over and over nervously. She looks pale and shaky: the bandage wrapped around her forearm is nearly the same color as her skin. He wants to reach for her, but doesn’t. 

“Kady hasn’t answered any of my texts, and I just tried to call her twice with no answer. She went out with Pete tonight, after they got back to the city, and Pete’s not answering either - some of my texts were - um, urgent, what with everything going on, and usually she answers pretty fast -” Alice says.

“So you think something happened to her?” Quentin says.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to go check on her. Penny’s going to take me to the loft so that I can - Anyway, I just wanted to say - good-night, I guess. Before I go.”

“Alice,” Quentin says, then flounders - now that things are starting to wind down, his exhaustion is coming back tenfold, making it hard to focus; he can’t figure out the right question to ask, aside from ‘what the fuck is going on with you’, and he’d like something that makes him sound like less of an asshole. “Is there - are you okay?” _Are we okay?_

Alice looks at him sharply for a second, then says, “I’m not hurt very badly, I’ll be fine.”

It’s not exactly what he meant, but all he says is, “Do you want me to come with you?”

“No,” Alice says. “Stay here and get some sleep, you look like shit.”

She leans forward suddenly - brushes a soft, rapid kiss against his temple, whispers, “Oh, god, Q, I’m so fucking glad you’re alive,” and then spins away before he can respond, hurrying across the room to where Penny is waiting. 

Quentin watches as they disappear.

Once Penny gets back and everyone settles into the beds, the infirmary lights shut off and Quentin falls asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow. Usually it takes him a while to get his brain to turn off, the spiraling of his anxieties suddenly given free reign with nothing else to distract him - and lately he’s been lucky to get any sleep at all, what with the constant refrain of ‘ _the Monster, the Monster, what are we going to do about the Monster_ ’ drumming its way through his days and nights. 

But tonight he passes out cold, free-falling into a dreamless sleep. He wakes up to the eerie, depressingly familiar feeling of being watched. 

One bed over, Eliot’s half-sitting up, staring at him.

Quentin freezes, all of his muscles locking up in a way that is also depressingly and infuriatingly familiar, because _fuck this_ \- that’s not the Monster, watching him in the dark, that’s Eliot, it’s _Eliot_ , and he grits his teeth and breathes in and out through his nose until he can force himself to relax, to shove his limbs into motion instead of going tharn like a fucking Watership Down rabbit.

He gets his arm underneath him, pushes himself up on one elbow. “Eliot?”

Eliot’s breathing too hard, his mouth moving silently, but then he stops, and starts shaking his head instead, gesturing at Quentin to lie back down. 

Quentin gets out of his cot, takes the couple of steps over to the side of Eliot’s bed. “El, what did you say?”

Eliot keeps shaking his head.

“What did you say?” Quentin repeats.

Eliot stares up at him in the dark - even this close, it’s hard to read his expression, but Quentin thinks he looks - lost. He slowly raises his hands and casts the pool of light spell, then says, _I dreamed I killed you._

“Eliot, you didn’t kill me,” Quentin says. There’s something unreal about whispering it to Eliot in the infirmary’s night-time quietness. He can hear their friends’ soft breathing, and the wind whistling outside.

_I shot the Monster_ , Eliot says.

Quentin breathes in, then out. “Yeah, you did.” He wants to say that it’s okay, but he can’t, it’s lodged in his throat - in the dark, with Eliot’s face half-obscured, the Monster is too close again suddenly, and the snap that his own arm had made when it broke is loud in his ears.

_I’m sorry. I wanted to keep you safe_ , Eliot says.

Quentin bites down on, ‘good fucking job you did there,’ because that’s crueler than he wants to be to Eliot, even in this moment.

Instead he says, “That’s not up to you.”

_I know_ , Eliot says, _I know, I know. Believe me, being possessed really gives you a crash course in the importance of - of self-determination._

“Promise me you won’t do it again,” Quentin says. “I need you to - I promised you about the grape thing, which you didn’t even explain, by the way -”

Eliot swallows, then says, _It would be easier if you’d stop throwing yourself on every fucking grenade that goes by -_

“That’s not - fuck you, Eliot. Then you get to try and talk me out of it, you don’t go behind my back and make my choices for me,” Quentin says fiercely, fighting to keep his voice down. “You don’t get to decide what’s best for me.”

Eliot says nothing for a moment. Then: _The grape thing. In the Underworld, Hades said that even if - even if he let you leave, you could choke on a grape and die tomorrow. Or I could. So._

Quentin sighs. “That won’t keep me safe either, you know.”

_I know_ , Eliot says. _But - I have to try. I - fuck, you died. You died, and I just got you back._

Quentin takes a step back, shaking his head, because that’s not enough, it’s not -

Eliot starts to reach for him, then stops, pulling his hands back into place before the pool of light spell breaks.

_I promise. Q, I promise_ , Eliot says. _I won’t - go behind your back, I won’t try to make decisions for you, that’s not ever what I meant to - I promise._

Quentin stands still and looks at him.

_I am - I am so fucking sorry, Q_ , Eliot says.

Quentin takes a deep breath, then reaches out to touch Eliot’s shoulder. Eliot who - who is shivering under his hand, who he had thought was dead, who had sung to him without a voice in the Underworld, who he had loved for a lifetime in a timeline one step to the left - and the shadow of the Monster is gone, and it’s just Eliot looking up at him with desperate eyes.

It’s not okay. It’s not okay, but Quentin thinks that - it will be, eventually, hopes that it will be, and that has to be enough. 

“You didn’t kill me,” Quentin says. “Yeah, you shot the Monster, but then a dozen other shitty things happened that had nothing to do with you. It wasn’t your fault.” Alice had burned the keys and Fogg had betrayed them to the Library, and on and on, and Quentin is too tired to sort out the threads of responsibility and blame in that whole clusterfuck. 

Eliot starts shaking his head again, so Quentin leans down and wraps his arms around him, says, “If you need to hear me say it, I forgive you, but Eliot - what happened to me wasn’t your fault.”

Eliot lets the pool of light spell dissolve and clings to him. Quentin says into his ear, “You didn’t kill me, El, you didn’t kill me,” but Eliot’s still shaking his head, his breathing gone jagged. Quentin starts to climb into the bed with him, because fuck it, before stopping short - “wait, no, you’re hurt -” but Eliot keeps pulling at him until Quentin gives up and maneuvers himself onto the bed next to Eliot as gently as he can. 

There’s barely enough room in the hospital bed for Eliot, never mind the two of them, and they end up tangled on their sides, face-to-face, with Eliot curled half on top of him, his forehead pressed against Quentin’s shoulder. Quentin touches the back of Eliot’s head with careful fingers, and says, “El, you brought me back.”

The two-way mirror had shattered, the pieces clinking to the ground, and Quentin had seen Eliot’s back disappearing through the doorway as he walked out of the room. He’d looked at Hades, who had raised his eyebrows and said nothing; so Quentin had looked back at the door where Eliot had gone, and then grabbed hold of the ledge (the broken glass hadn’t cut his hands) and hauled himself through the hole where the mirror had been, then - across the room and through the door, down the hall, through the black void (Eliot walking in front of him, steps slow and halting), all the way to the surface, to the doorway with a gray morning shining through it, leaving the shadows of the Underworld behind. 

Quentin had walked through the doorway. He had chosen that, had chosen - the world, his life, everything that that meant; and that’s a memory he knows he can - knows he _will_ \- cup his hands around when he needs to, a warm burning flicker of light he can bring into dark places.

Quentin closes his eyes, keeps petting Eliot’s hair. He should really - move, sit up - Eliot can’t talk like this, and they probably should talk some more, this is going to get weird any second now - 

Instead he falls asleep.

It’s still dark when he wakes up - someone is shoving roughly at him and saying, “No, nope, none of that, get back in your own bed,” and he sits up, confused and grouchy and half-asleep, to see Lipson’s irritated face looking down at him.

“This is a fucking hospital, cuddle on your own time,” she says, and prods at him until he extracts himself from Eliot’s arms and stumbles back to his cot. 

When he wakes up again, it’s morning. The light in the infirmary is cool and watery, there’s rain streaking the windows. Julia and Penny are still sleeping soundly, but Eliot and Margo’s beds are empty.

Quentin tries to take stock of himself - even after sleeping for hours, he’s still tired, an all-over, dragging kind of tiredness, and hungry but in a distant, unimportant way - both bad signs; and he’s looking around, neck inexplicably tight with tension until he realizes - he’s looking for the Monster.

Shit. Fuck, he just wants this to be _over_. And it should be over - the Monster’s gone, and he literally came back from the dead yesterday, it’s so fucking unfair that he can’t - 

There’s a note on Eliot’s bed, a folded piece of paper that says Q on the front. Quentin swallows, looking at it, and then gets out of bed and walks over to pick it up.

The note says: GOOD MORNING Q, MARGO AND I GONE TO SHOWER AND CHANGE. PLEASE DON’T GO ANYWHERE TIL WE GET BACK. PLEASE. LOVE, ELIOT

Quentin holds the note in his hands for a few seconds, smiling despite himself, then folds it back up and puts it down on his cot.

A shower. A shower would be good. The nurse on duty had magicked everyone’s clothes clean and dry last night, for the infirmary’s sake rather than theirs, but - Quentin looks down at his clothes, tries to figure out exactly how long he’s been wearing the same shirt and jeans: forty-eight hours, give or take, with about five and half months somewhere in the middle. When Julia wakes up, he’ll have to ask her what happened to his stuff, if they kept anything - he shakes his head. Shower first.

He gets some scrubs from the nurse, just to have something clean to change into, then heads into the shower area. 

He starts stripping down, then stops. There’s a mirror on the wall, and he looks at himself, standing there mostly naked.

He looks - the same. Terrible bedhead, check, pale worried face, check, the familiar everyday lines of his body - he reaches up and touches his shoulder - still scarred, still magical wood under fake skin. When he twists, he can see the Q tattoo on his back; the scar on his knee from junior cowboy camp is there, all his scars are still there - he runs his hands over them one by one and he is - 

He is breathing too fast, his hands going cold and tingly and oh, hey, a panic attack, Quentin thinks, it’s been a while, but he knows the drill - he sinks down to the floor, puts his head between his knees, and tries to breathe in through his nose, out through his mouth, because he’s fine, he’s fine, everything’s fine now -

It hadn’t hurt. Dying. 

It had happened so fast - he’d had time for one horrible second of _knowing_ \- knowing that he was completely and utterly fucked, that this was _it_ \- but it hadn’t hurt. 

It just - it seems like something like that should have left a mark -

There’s a loud cracking noise, and Quentin jerks, looks up. 

The mirror is broken. 

There’s a long crack running through the middle of it, but even as he watches, mouth falling open, the reflection of his own wide eyes staring back at him, the crack starts to repair itself, magic running along its edges and knitting it back together.

Holy shit. Holy shit, is he - 

He is. He’s doing this.

Julia had told him, before they’d gone to sleep, about the problem with the magical charge build-up - “you should cast something every morning when you wake up, little things during the day, then again when you go to bed - but sometimes it still - it happens fast if you’re upset,” but she hadn’t said, she hadn’t said exactly what -

But that’s all this is, he’s not - cursed, or - his breathing is still unsteady, too quick, but he lifts one hand, casts the fire spell he’d done last night with Julia.

The ball of fire appears over his palm, and the mirror stops mending itself. 

He sits on the floor and breathes for a while. Then he makes himself get up, and casts the spell to fix the mirror. 

The crack disappears, the glass melding silently together until the mirror is whole again; and he’s staring at himself in its smooth, polished surface.

See? Fixed. 

You’d never know that it had been broken at all.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is a radio code meaning "signal good, loud and clear", a reference to Quentin's name, and a reference from _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ where it's used by Faith to mean 'it's all good', even when things are, in fact, not at all good.
> 
> Additional Tags: I've added additional tags for references to depression, suicide and alcohol/drug abuse. 
> 
> Quentin's depression, suicidal ideation and previous hospitalizations are discussed in this chapter, and will come up again in the story. I am sticking pretty closely to what canon gives us in terms of whether Quentin's death in the finale was a suicide or not: in that Quentin's not sure. He did what he did to save his friends, but he was in a bad place mentally (and is still in a bad place), and he's not sure how much that made his decision easier than it should have been. Quentin is still dealing with depression and post-traumatic stress from the Monster and from his death; he has a mild panic attack at the end of chapter.
> 
> Lipson's suicide attempt in the beginning of season 3 is also brought up, fairly callously.
> 
> Kady and Eliot's issues with drug and alcohol addiction are referenced in the story, but aren't main plot points.
> 
> The Wonder Twins are DC Comics characters.
> 
> "Activate the Cone of Silence" is from the show _Get Smart_.
> 
> 'a light he can bring into dark places' is a paraphrase of the line from _The Lord of the Rings_.


	6. Wake - Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She stops, nailing Julia with an iron stare, a High King stare. “This is fucked up, you know that, right? This is fucked up, and it is actively fucking us up, because Quentin is dead and gone and the longer we spend trying to bring him back and failing, the harder it gets to actually deal with it.”
> 
> Julia takes a breath. Counts - _1, 2, 3_ ; lets it out. “I’m not giving up yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mention of suicide in this chapter - please see the end notes for a full description.

Penny wakes up when Julia sits straight up in the bed beside his and says, “Where is he?”

“What?” Penny says, trying to jump-start his brain. He feels like he’s been hit by a truck - all his muscles are sore and there’s a throbbing pain near his collarbone where - oh, right, a fucking _maenad_ bit him last night as he’d tried to wrestle her teeth away from his throat. 

He lifts his head off the pillow, and sees what Julia’s looking at: Quentin’s bed is empty. 

Quentin. Who was dead, and is now alive -

\- and _holy fuck_ , they’d actually done it, it had actually worked - Penny had been prepared for it not to work, had been resigned to it, had been trying to figure out if - if there was a point he’d have to look at Julia and say, “We have to stop, you have to stop,” and how he was almost completely certain that when that point came, she’d tell him to go fuck himself. And then what? Then what the hell was he supposed to do?

But now - now Quentin is alive. Alive but not in his bed, and Julia is clambering out of her own bed and looking around frantically, something close to panic on her face.

“Hey, hey,” Penny says, “Margo and Eliot are gone too, he’s probably with them -”

“Right, sure,” Julia says, but she’s hurrying over to Quentin’s bed to pick up the note folded up on it. She’s moving stiffly - her leg must still be hurting her from last night, when she’d rolled into a huge rock trying to get away from the pack of maenads that had swarmed them.

Julia picks up the note, reads it, then drops it on the bed again. “He’s not with Margo and Eliot,” she says, already striding off towards the nurse’s desk. 

Penny gets out of bed slowly, his body aching, and follows her. He makes it to the nurse’s desk just as Julia is spinning away from it, heading towards the bathroom and shower area. “She said he went to take a shower,” she says, over her shoulder.

Penny says, “And so we’re following him in? Why?”

Julia pauses, rubbing at her upper arms. “I want to make sure he’s okay.”

“Julia,” Penny says, then stops as Julia turns to look at him, her face tight.

“I know this is a little nuts, okay? I know. But I need to check.” 

“Okay,” Penny says, and Julia gives him the smallest twitch of a smile before continuing on towards the showers.

She stops before actually going in, though; Penny can hear water running inside.

“Q,” Julia calls, “it’s Julia, is everything, um - is everything good?”

There’s no answer for a second, and then the water shuts off and Quentin calls back, “Julia? Yeah, it’s - I’m fine. Is something going on?” 

“No, nope, everything’s fine, just checking,” Julia says. “Penny and I are going to go to the Cottage to change and then we’re gonna come back, alright?”

“Yeah, sure,” Quentin says. The water turns back on.

Julia takes a couple of steps backwards, then turns to look at Penny. “Or maybe we should wait until -”

“He’s okay,” Penny says. “He’s here and he’s alive, and -” He has to stop to swallow down the tightness in his throat. “Julia, you did it. He’s okay.”

“Yeah,” Julia says, “yeah, we did it.” She’s looking up at him and nodding, and then her eyes fill with tears, and she steps forward into his arms. 

Penny closes his eyes and holds onto her, puts his hands lightly against her back, makes sure not to pull her too close. It’s been a while, since Julia last hugged him.

“So everything should be fine now, right?” Julia says into his chest, her voice gone hoarse. “I think I just can’t believe - I can’t believe we got this fucking lucky. I keep waiting for the moment when something goes horribly wrong.”

“I know,” Penny says. He’s waiting for it too, to be honest. Before they’d all gone to sleep, he had spent most of last night trying not to stare at Quentin, but unable to keep from watching him, looking for signs of - something. The twisted emptiness of the Quentin from his own timeline, mainly, although Fogg and Lipson had confirmed that Quentin had a shade - but it could be something different this time, something else gone wrong. He’d poked around psychically too - the edges of Quentin’s wards had been shaky, and Penny hadn’t felt much guilt about skirting around the perimeter of Quentin’s mind on the off-chance that he’d catch a glimpse of some evil Hannibal Lecteresque surprise lying concealed under the mask of ordinary, authentic Quentin-ness. 

But he hadn’t found anything - Quentin had looked and sounded like himself, had felt like himself - there were some dark fucking undercurrents going on there, yeah, but nothing worse than what had been there before, those times last year when Penny had caught the occasional sliver of _grief pain fear resolve_ from him whenever things had gotten especially bad with the Monster, and - and then again at the end, in the Mirror World, when Quentin had glanced at him and let his wards drop -

Quentin’s wards are still shit this morning, he must not have redone them yet; Penny can feel bits and pieces of him trickling over from the shower area - relief and comfort from the hot water, with a sharp edge of anxiety just below the surface. For an instant Penny sees: cracks spreading, a mirror breaking, before Quentin sticks his head under the water and shoves the memory away - but shit, it’s not like Penny can blame him for being a little fucked-up about that - the guy had fucking _died_.

“I’m not used to things actually turning out okay, either,” Penny says. “But if it makes you feel better, I’m about ninety percent sure that he’s not about to go six-fingered psycho Mothman on us.”

Julia laughs. “Ninety percent?”

“Yeah,” Penny says.

“That’ll do,” Julia says, and steps back, wiping at her eyes. “Fuck.”

“Is everything -” Alice appears from around the corner, skidding to a halt. “Oh. Hi. The nurse said everyone was back here.” She’s still wearing the same clothes from the night before, and looks like she’s running on fumes - probably fumes made up of caffeine and pure determination.

“Everything’s fine,” Julia says. “Quentin’s in the shower, Penny and I are going to the Cottage to clean up and change. Is Kady okay?”

“She’s okay,” Alice says, her face softening. “Has anyone eaten yet? I can go to the cafeteria and get breakfast -”

“That would be amazing, thank you,” Julia says.

“It’s no problem. I - Julia, thank _you_ ,” Alice says. “Thank you.”

Julia smiles at her, says, “No - we did it. We fucking did it, all of us,” and Alice smiles back with shining eyes. This Alice, this timeline’s Alice, is drastically different then the one Penny had known, but sometimes - mostly when she smiles, when she’s happy (so once in a blue fucking moon) - he can see the echo of that other girl, that other Alice, and he can see it now.

“We’ll be back in a bit,” Julia says, and Penny touches her shoulder, and takes them to the Cottage.

He feels a thousand times better after a piss, a shower (enspelled water-proof bandages FTW), and a change of clothes. He’s standing in the bathroom brushing his teeth when Julia leans her head in, her hair falling onto her shoulders in damp waves.

“Hey, how’s that bite doing? Is it healing okay?”

Penny spits in the sink. “Yeah, it feels fine.” What it feels like is sore as fuck, but he’d taken a quick look under the bandage and it didn’t look infected, and he figures that’s the important part. 

“Maybe we should go back to the infirmary later today, have them check on it,” Julia says.

“Sure, if that makes you feel better,” Penny says, rinsing his mouth out with a handful of water.

When he looks up from the sink, Julia is staring at him. “Penny -”

“What?”

Julia’s gaze shifts away, and she sticks her hands in the pockets of her jacket. “In my room, everything is still - I mean, all our research, everything we’ve been preparing - it’s all still on the bed, on the floor. It looks the same as yesterday.”

“But it’s not the same as yesterday,” Penny says.

“No, it’s not,” Julia says. “Q’s back. We got him back.” She laughs a little, shakily, then says, “So, now what?”

“Now what? Now - whatever you want,” Penny says, shrugging.

“Yeah, that’s the thing. You’ve been helping me all this time, all these months, but now - we did it. It’s done. I just -” Julia stops, then looks straight at him. “What do you want? What do you want for yourself? I don’t think I’ve ever asked you that.”

“I -” _You. I want to be wherever you are._ Penny doesn’t say that, can’t say that, but - he honestly can’t think of anything else to say. 

(And truth: he knows that’s fucked up, he knows, okay? After - after what had happened in Fillory, he had spent so long running, trying to forget the past and refusing to think about the future, and now he’s fallen out of the habit, can’t seem to get it back.) 

He shrugs again, looks away, his hands going sweaty, hopes that Julia can’t tell how cornered he feels. “I don’t know.”

“I’m not expecting you to whip out a five year plan,” Julia says, rubbing at her left arm. “But I wanted to - ask.”

“Is your arm okay?” Penny says. “You keep rubbing it.”

Julia immediately looks guilty, and Penny says, “Wait - Julia, isn’t that where that guy grabbed you -” 

Mid dragon egg heist, things had gone totally fucking sideways with the unexpected appearance of a kelpie that - who knew? - worked security for the docks; the ensuing knock-down drag-out fight had thrown them off their schedule, and one of Gareth’s crew had surprised them on the boat, grabbing Julia by the arm before she’d nailed him in the face with a sleeping spell. She’d seemed fine though, hadn’t said anything about it - 

“Yeah, but it’s not - it’s just a little sore,” Julia says.

“It’s been five days and it’s still sore? Why didn’t you say something?”

Julia sighs, rolls her shoulders. “Because we had more important shit to do, okay? Crazy ancient resurrection magic shit, and we were running out of time, and I didn’t want you to get distracted -”

“You should have told me,” Penny says, starting to lift his hand to reach for her, then forcing it back down. “Does it look - did he leave a mark?”

“It’s fine,” Julia says. “Don’t freak out.” Penny’s feelings about _that_ must be all over his face, because Julia raises her hands placatingly and says, “When we go back to the infirmary to check on your bite, I’ll have Professor Lipson take a look at my arm, alright?”

“Okay, fine,” Penny says. “Look - you could have told me. I wouldn’t have been distracted.”

Julia gives him a flat, knowing look, says, “Yes, you would’ve. You would have been worrying about me, instead of the spell, or Q.”

Penny opens his mouth, then closes it again.

Julia says, “Anyway. We have to go meet Q and Alice. I’m gonna go put my shoes on,” and disappears through the doorway. 

Penny stands there in the bathroom, holding his toothbrush, and tries to work out how he could have salvaged any of that conversation. “Fuck.” 

*

“Alice? Alice? Hey, babe, wake up, is everything okay?”

Alice opens her eyes. Kady’s leaning over her, one hand touching her shoulder gently. A dim gray morning is visible through the loft’s wall of windows.

Alice jack-knifes herself upright with a gasp - she’s been slumped asleep on Kady’s couch, her legs curled up and her glasses in her lap. “Shit! I didn’t mean to fall asleep -”

She’d been sitting on the couch in the loft waiting for Kady to come home, had decided to give it one more hour before she started taking drastic measures (and Alice has access to some pretty drastic fucking measures). Della, one of the hedges who’s been crashing at Kady’s place, had said that there were rumors about a murdered hedge turning up somewhere in the tunnels beneath the city, Kady and Pete were most likely investigating, and if they were underground, were probably not getting cell service - it was all perfectly logical and Alice had definitely not been nearly vibrating out of her skin with worry (somewhere in the back of her mind: what if she’d gotten Q back only to lose Kady, some kind of perverse karmic fuck-you from the universe, what if what if what if - until she’d felt sick with it). But then the post-channeling-massive-amounts-of-magic exhaustion had hit her hard, and she’d taken her glasses off and tilted her head against the couch cushion, just for a second -

“Are you alright? What happened to your arm?” Kady says, sitting down on the couch next to her.

“I’m - my arm’s fine, it’s -” She’s stumbling over her words, brain still hazy with tiredness - then the relief hits her like a body blow. “Kady. Kady, oh fuck, you’re okay,” she says, and flings her arms around her, kisses Kady’s soft surprised mouth. 

Kady kisses her back, wrapping an arm around Alice to steady her; she’s cold, and her jacket smells like rain and damp, she must have just gotten in. Kady pulls back after a moment, says, “Hey, yeah, I’m okay, of course I am, what -”

“Didn’t you see my texts?” Alice says, curling her fingers into Kady’s sleeve.

“No, shit, sorry - long, weird fucking story short, we got held hostage in the Lair all night by a giant alligator who couldn’t decide if she wanted to eat us or be best buds, and we had to give her our phones as collateral before she would let us go,” Kady says. 

“A giant sewer alligator has your phone?”

“She wanted to keep Pete, but I decided the phones were the better option,” Kady says.

“And I appreciate that,” Pete calls from the kitchen. “We gave her the pizza too, and now Judy thinks Kady’s her new best friend, like April from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or some shit.”

Kady snorts. “She’s not my friend, she’s a potential witness in a murder investigation.”

“Judy?” Alice says.

“The alligator’s name is Judy Garland,” Kady says, with a weary eye-roll. “Apparently the magician who used to take care of her was a big fan. Anyway, that’s not - forget the alligator, there’s a shit-ton more important things we have to talk about -”

“But - you didn’t get any of my texts, you didn’t -” Alice interrupts.

“No,” Kady says, blinking at her. She looks almost as tired as Alice feels. “No, why - what happened?”

“Q’s alive,” Alice says.

Kady stares at her. “What?”

“He’s alive,” Alice says, and then just starts fucking crying, of all the idiotic things - of course this is the exact moment that all her fucking _feelings_ have decided to show up - “We did the spell. We did it, and it worked - we got him back, he’s alive -”

“Holy shit,” Kady says. “Holy fucking shit, are you - Alice, that’s amazing, that’s fucking incredible -” She hugs Alice, hauls her in close, and Alice leans her head on Kady’s shoulder, and tries to breathe, tries to pull herself together. Kady’s jacket is wet with rain, but her hair is soft against the side of Alice’s face. 

Kady says, “But what the hell happened? And if Quentin’s alive, what are you doing _here_?”

Alice sits back, glares at Kady blearily. “What do you mean, what am I doing here? I was fucking worried about you, you asshole, you went complete radio silence on me, I was trying to decide when I should break out the hardcore locator spells, the kind that need bodily fluids -”

“Oh,” Kady says, quiet, and Alice isn’t sure what - she wipes at her eyes, puts her glasses on, but then Kady says, “Well, I’m okay, so you don’t have to - where is he?” 

“He’s at Brakebills, everyone’s still there - we all had to go the infirmary afterwards because of the maenads, and that fucking dog,” Alice says. 

Kady raises her eyebrows, and Alice adds, “It’s also a long, weird story.”

“Yeah, sounds like,” Kady says, and then stands up from the couch, crossing her arms. “Look, tell me about it later. Go back to Brakebills, and I’ll change and chug some coffee and meet you there, okay? I wasn’t kidding before, there’s something important we have to talk about.”

“Okay, yeah,” Alice says, looking up at her, then blurts out, “I’m just - I’m so mad at him. I’m so, so happy that he’s back, and I’m so angry that I barely kept myself from screaming at him last night.”

Kady gives her a long look. “You know what the great thing is, about someone being alive instead of dead? It means you can yell at them, and they can yell back, and then you can make up afterwards. Yesterday Q was fucking dead, and today he’s alive, so - go see him.”

“You’re right, I - you’re right,” Alice says. The thing left unsaid, the not-ghost in the attic: Penny, Kady’s Penny, who she doesn’t get to fight with ever again. “Shit. Okay, I’ll see you there later.”

She gets up from the couch, wincing at the ache in her back and legs, drags her hands through her hair and pats down her dress, starts to walk to the door. Kady moves towards the kitchen, and then Alice stops, turns around.

“Kady? This doesn’t - I mean, I still -” Alice says. “Did you call me ‘babe’, before?”

“What?” Kady says, frowning at her.

“Nothing, never mind,” Alice says. “I’ll meet you at Brakebills.”

After running into Julia and Penny in the infirmary, Alice goes to the cafeteria to get breakfast for everyone - it’s just past dawn on a rainy Saturday, and the place is quiet except for the keenest, most early-bird students (or the ones who’ve pulled all-nighters). Brakebills doesn’t skimp on breakfast, and Alice is absolutely starving, so she fills up plates with every possible option; then rounds up a few of the enchanted trays that the cafeteria keeps on hand, and floats the whole impromptu picnic back to the infirmary with a shield spell to keep the rain off.

She’s taking the lids off of the trays when Quentin walks out of the shower area. He stops when he sees her, and they stare at each other.

Quentin’s barefoot and wearing ill-fitting scrubs, his regular clothes and shoes tucked in a bundle under his arm, his hair wet from the shower. He looks tired and young, and he’s watching her with wary eyes, and Alice can’t stand it. 

She clears her throat, says, “Hey. I - um, I brought food,” and gestures at the trays spread across two of the infirmary beds, feeling weird and Vanna White-ish.

Quentin looks at the plates full of eggs, bacon, grilled mushrooms, three kinds of potatoes, fruit salad, pancakes, yogurt - she maybe went a little overboard - then looks back at her, smiling uncertainly. “Back-from-the-dead breakfast food?”

Alice laughs like it’s been punched out of her, says, “It’s tradition,” with a shrug, but her voice is shaky and Quentin’s face is crumpling, and Alice rushes forward into his arms. She holds on to him as tight as she can - he’s warm and solid, breathing unsteadily but _breathing_ and alive, alive and holding her back just as tight, instead of - instead of shattering, disintegrating, dying in that horrible fucking room - 

She hadn’t been able to do this last night - she’d felt like a live wire, like if anyone touched her for too long she might turn on them, might do something awful. “I’m sorry about last night,” she says, into the side of Quentin’s neck. “I was - I couldn’t -”

“It’s okay,” Quentin says. He takes a deep breath, says, “It’s - this whole thing is so fucking bizarre, I don’t blame you for - everyone keeps staring at me like I’m the Second Coming, except they can’t decide if I’m Jesus or the Anti-Christ.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Alice says, letting go of him and taking a step back, sniffing hard. “You’re obviously not Jesus or the devil.”

“I know, right, it’s -”

“You’re Eurydice,” Alice says. “At least, in the version where Orpheus trusted her.”

Quentin stares at her. His expression is - strange, cracked-open, and Alice looks away. She’s not jealous that it was Eliot who brought him back - okay, it burns a little, that old, old hurt, that for so long it had been just Q, for her: he had been the one she loved, the only one - and then even more than that, he had been the one who _reminded_ her of - everything, her connection to humanity, who she used to be, both the good and the bad parts, and sometimes she’d felt trapped and furious about it, and sometimes desperately grateful - but it hadn’t ever been that like for him, not really. He had loved her, he loves her - but. It hadn’t been the same. He had had so many more people to love, so many more people to love him.

But it’s not like that for Alice anymore either - she’s spent nearly every night of the last two months in Kady’s bed, and it’s been _good_ , it’s been - So. It would be a lie to say she’s not jealous of Eliot; it does burn. But less than she would have expected it to, and she’d have to be the world’s biggest hypocrite to actually say anything about it. She’s got plenty of fucking things to say to Quentin as it is.

“Alice -” Quentin says, and Alice decides she’s not dealing with this on an empty stomach.

“Let’s eat,” Alice says, and picks up an empty plate and starts filling it up. 

She can feel Quentin staring at the side of her face, but after a few seconds he says, “Sure,” and starts on his own plate. She takes some of pretty much everything, and then they sit on one of the empty beds and eat in silence for a while.

“I feel like a time-traveler,” Quentin says finally. “Like - to me it feels as though we went to the Mirror World yesterday, like all of that just happened, but for everyone else it was months ago.”

“I get it,” Alice says. “When I got back after I broke out of the Library, I’d lost so much time, so much had happened and I - wasn’t here. I didn’t help.” 

“Right, so - things have changed, I know. It’s just hard to -” Quentin sighs, shovels a piece of potato into his mouth. “Julia told me about the truce with the Library last night. At least we don’t have to worry about those assholes anymore.”

Alice puts her fork down. “What exactly did Julia tell you?”

“Uh, not much,” Quentin says. “We were all crashing, she could barely keep her eyes open - I asked her if it was safe for us to be at Brakebills, and she said it was fine, that the Library wasn’t after us anymore, and that it was a long story and she’d explain the rest later -”

“I’m running the Library now,” Alice says.

“What?” Quentin says, his head coming up sharply.

“Zelda hired me to run the Library - she wanted an outsider who could -”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Quentin says. “Alice. Tell me you didn’t sign one of those billion year contracts -”

“Of course I didn’t,” Alice says. “Jesus fucking Christ, do you think I’m stupid?”

“Penny -”

“Penny was desperate, but I’m not desperate _or_ stupid, so no, I didn’t sign a billion year contract, I didn’t even join the Order - I had a very expensive lawyer-magician draw up a one year contract with option to renew as a consultant,” Alice says, putting her plate down and getting up from the bed to pace across the infirmary. “And thanks so much for the vote of confidence.”

“Okay, fine, sorry,” Quentin says tightly. “Like I was just saying, it feels like yesterday the Library was trying to, you know, control all of magic and hunt us down like criminals, so if you could give me ten fucking seconds to process -”

“I don’t actually need your approval,” Alice snaps.

“I didn’t say you did -”

“Or your input, because the thing is, you weren’t fucking here, were you?” Alice says.

Quentin looks at her, then puts his plate down and stands up, crossing his arms defensively. “No, I wasn’t here. I was dead.”

Alice flinches, despite herself - and then the fury blazes through her again. “Yeah, because you _killed yourself in front of me_. Because you - you had Penny drag me out of the room, so I all could do was watch you die, you fucking -” She stops, breathing hard, she can’t think of any word terrible enough. Her hands are curling like claws, and she’s vaguely aware that she’s bleeding magic again, twisting ribbons of light shimmering around her like - (like when she was a Niffin) - like tongues of blue flame.

Quentin goes white, says, “That’s not what -” 

“I said - I sat there next to you on the stairs, and I said we were better as a team, and you said that sounded good, and it was all complete bullshit,” Alice says.

“There was no _time_ ,” Quentin says. “What, did you want to have a brain-storming session? The bond wasn’t going to hold -” 

“So you just decided - you didn’t even consider any other options -”

“There were no other options, it was either going to be the Monster loose again or, or fucking Everett becoming a god -”

“And maybe we could have dealt with that, but you didn’t even -”

“We couldn’t have dealt with that, he would have been a thousand times worse than the Monster, and you have no idea how fucking bad -” Quentin’s nearly yelling now, and then a glass of orange juice sitting on one of the trays shatters to pieces, and they both jump and look at it. The pieces of glass slowly rise into the air, dripping with juice, and start fitting themselves back together. 

“That’s you, isn’t it,” Alice says.

Quentin says nothing. He’s holding himself so tightly that his fingernails are digging into his arms.

Alice’s eyes are burning, and she can feel a headache starting, pain pressing in near her temples - too little sleep and too much fucking crying. She lifts her hand and casts a simple light spell, creates a small floating glow-ball, and the blue flames hanging in the air around her vanish. 

She says, “You should do a spell before you break something else,” and Quentin turns away, his jaw clenched, and casts a cleaning spell on the tray, mopping up the spilled juice just as the mended glass lands back on the tray with a gentle clink.

“You had Penny drag me out,” Alice says. “I had to _watch_ -” She stops, swallowing. “So much for being better as a team.”

“I wanted you to be safe,” Quentin says quietly.

“That’s not fucking good enough,” Alice says. 

Quentin blinks, turning to look at her. “I -”

“Fuck, Quentin, you’re really - Alice told me but holy fuck -” 

They both turn: Kady’s standing in the infirmary’s entrance-way.

“Kady. You made it,” Alice says. Jesus motherfuck. She should have just spent the morning asleep on Kady’s couch.

*

Kady gives Quentin a hug - she doesn’t know she’s going to do it until she’s standing right in front of him, and the reality of it hits her: Quentin, staring back at her, smiling a little in greeting, hair messy and damp and wearing scrubs for some reason, alive alive _alive_ , and she steps forward and hugs him without even thinking about it.

He hugs her back tentatively. “Kady, hey.”

“It’s good to see you again,” Kady says, and shit, she’s tearing up over here, has to blink hard to try and keep it together.

They’re not - she’s never been close to Quentin, but they’d been there together at Brakebills at the very beginning of all this fucking craziness, and in and out of each other’s lives ever since (once you’ve been trapped in a bank vault with someone during a botched robbery, or had them break you out of a psych ward, you kind of end up bonding whether you want to or not) - and more recently they’d spent months living in each other’s pockets at the loft, grunting good morning in the kitchen and by silent mutual agreement never commenting on each other’s weird food choices - and it turns out she’s really fucking happy that he’s not dead.

Of course, the fact that she’s been fucking his girlfriend while he’s been - uh, pining for the fjords is probably going to make things awkward for a while. The real question is exactly how much Alice has told him about said fucking, and Kady makes a snap decision: until she talks to Alice about it, she’s gonna assume that the answer is zilch. Kady’s hit the stage of sleep deprivation that’s almost like being high, where everything seems unreal and funnier then it actually is; she should not be having conversations where she’s required to be sensitive about anyone’s feelings. 

Kady lets go of Quentin, stepping back and turning to beam at Alice. She’s glad that Q’s back, but she’s over the damn moon for _Alice’s_ sake that he’s back. “You did it, you actually fucking did it - you brought him back.”

“Eliot brought him back,” Alice says.

Kady stares at her; so does Quentin. Alice crosses her arms and looks at the floor. Kady looks at Quentin, and then they both look away - and goddamn, this is a whole separate detour of awkward that Kady hadn’t even known to watch out for. She is suddenly one hundred percent certain of two things: one, Alice had gone ahead and picked that fight with Quentin, and two, they haven’t gotten anywhere near the kiss-and-make-up part yet. Fuck.

Julia and Penny 23 appear in the entrance-way, and Kady nearly gives up her moratorium on prayer right then and there because thank fucking god.

“Hey,” Penny 23 says to her, and then looks at the trays of food covering two of the beds. “Nice, breakfast - thanks, Alice.”

“Kady, hi,” Julia says, and then before Kady can respond, catches sight of Quentin and says, “Oh, shit, I should have brought some clothes for you from the Cottage. I’ve got all your stuff there, your clothes, your phone - my brain is still fried from last night, I swear -”

“You’ve got my phone?” Quentin says. “That’s great, I was wondering -” He stops, his eyes going huge. “Jules - oh shit, Jules, what did you tell my mom?”

Kady sees Alice’s arms drop back to her sides, the stoniness melting out of her expression as she steps towards him, but Julia gets there first, grabbing hold of Quentin’s shoulder and saying, “Hey, don’t worry, we didn’t tell her anything - we used the same spell as when we all got memory-wiped, she just thinks you’ve been backpacking through Mongolia or wherever and haven’t been in contact. I made Fogg promise to give me six months -”

“Six months?” Quentin asks.

“To bring you back,” Julia says. “And we got in under the wire, so.”

“That’s good, that’s - I should call her -” Quentin says.

“Why don’t we all go to the Cottage?” Julia says, looking at Penny 23, who nods. “We can take the food and eat it there, and you can get your stuff -”

“You guys go ahead,” Alice says. “Kady and I need to talk about something.”

Kady knows when she’s being asked to back a play, so she says, “Yeah, hedge business, trouble in Dodge City and all that.”

Quentin stares hard at Alice, who won’t meet his eyes, then says shortly, “Fine. We’ll have to tell Eliot and Margo -”

“No problem, I’ll text them,” Julia says. “Okay, let’s grab these trays.”

Kady takes a moment to walk over to where Julia’s loading up a tray, touches her on the wrist. “Julia, hey. I - I’m glad you didn’t listen to me.”

Julia looks at her, surprised, and then smiles, a real smile, eyes crinkling at the corners. 

“Thanks,” Julia says. She still looks tired and stressed, and there are faint remains of scratch-marks on her face and hands, but her smile is brighter and happier than Kady’s seen in a long time. She reaches out and squeezes Kady’s hand, and Kady grins back at her. “We’ll see you later, yeah?”

After Julia, Penny 23 and Quentin have vanished along with most of the food (Kady had snagged a plate of eggs and hashbrowns), Kady looks at Alice. “Uh, so that was -”

“Awful, it was - fucking awful, and I can’t even -” Alice says, pushing her glasses up to press her fingers against her eyes. Kady resists the urge to reach out and stroke her hair - Quentin’s back now, things are different. “Please talk to me about murder and sewer alligators instead?”

“Sure,” Kady says, slowly - this is probably not the best time to ask whether Alice had told Quentin about the two of them. “But I don’t think it’s going to cheer you up. I saw Marina last night, and she said that Librarians have been hassling hedges in New York.”

“What?” Alice says, opening her eyes and adjusting her glasses. “Why? I haven’t heard anything about that.”

“Okay, this is according to Marina, who’s the polar opposite of a reliable source, but apparently a dragon egg was stolen a few days ago, and I guess the Library -” 

“Oh, fuck,” Alice says, her mouth dropping open.

“So you do know about it?” Kady says.

“No - I mean, yes, I do, but not through the Library,” Alice says. “That was _us_.”

“What do you -”

Alice glances around the infirmary, then steps in close to Kady and casts a series of silencing and privacy wards around them. “That was us, who stole the dragon egg. Or - well, Julia and Penny stole the egg, technically, but we used it last night, we destroyed it, it was part of the spell to bring Q back -”

“Oh, fuck,” Kady says, staring at her, and Alice nods in frantic agreement. “I thought we were trying to be more - responsible pillars of the community types now, and less with the crime -”

“It was for Q,” Alice says.

Kady sighs, because she’s not going to argue with that, especially not since it had worked. “Right, omelets, eggs, breaking - whatever. Okay, why don’t you start with: what the hell happened last night?” 

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mention of suicide in this chapter - during their fight, Alice refers to Quentin's death as him killing himself in front of her, although she means it in the context of a self-sacrifice rather than suicide.
> 
> Kady's line about Quentin pining for the fjords is a reference to _Monty Python_ 's Dead Parrot sketch.


	7. Wake - Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She stops, nailing Julia with an iron stare, a High King stare. “This is fucked up, you know that, right? This is fucked up, and it is actively fucking us up, because Quentin is dead and gone and the longer we spend trying to bring him back and failing, the harder it gets to actually deal with it.”
> 
> Julia takes a breath. Counts - _1, 2, 3_ ; lets it out. “I’m not giving up yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mention of suicide in this chapter - please see the end notes for a full description.

The claw-marks from the maenad are mostly healed, but Margo doesn’t want to risk putting foundation on top of them. She examines her face in the mirror - she could cast a small glamour instead, but it’s tricky illusion magic, the slightest bend of a finger and the whole thing goes full uncanny valley - so whatever, fuck it. They’re fucking battle wounds, why hide ‘em? She’ll stick to eye-makeup today. 

“Do _not_ turn chickenshit on me now, El - if you pull some kind of CW teen drama sad pining bullshit, I’ll kick your ass to Fillory and back,” she says, and rummages through her makeup bag for eyeshadow primer.

Her phone buzzes on the vanity table, and she glances down at it. 

_A couple of days, that’s all i mean. To give everyone a chance to breathe_

A few seconds later, another text comes through: _no pun intended_

Margo shakes her head skeptically, starts applying the primer. “So what you’re saying is you’re not being chickenshit, you’re being emotionally fucking mature?”

Eliot lets out a loud, dramatic sigh from where he’s sitting on the room’s extra bed, his back propped up against the pillows and his legs stretched out. They’d shared this room for the first couple of weeks after Eliot had first gotten out of the infirmary, when he’d only been able to make as far as the bathroom and back without help, and then Eliot had moved into his own room down the hall - but he still spends more time sprawled across the second bed in Margo’s room then he does in his own. 

It’s just the two of them on the whole floor - all of the first years having left for their respective disciplines’ houses (or having kicked it in the Goose Incident), and Margo had taken full advantage of the lack of scrutiny to do some redecorating; she’d managed to portal in most of her furniture from her old room in the Cottage, because if she’s stuck on Earth, a High King in exile, and in a first year dorm room no less, she’s at least going to sleep in her own bed surrounded by her own shit.

_i don’t want to make things worse for him_ , Eliot texts. _i don’t want to get between him and alice if they’re working their shit out_

“Yeah, I was really feeling the love between them last night,” Margo says.

_q and alice fighting? what a shock, what a curveball. you know that means fuck-all_

“Also, I think Alice and Kady are banging,” Margo says, opening her eyeshadow palette. 

She sees a flash of movement in the mirror - Eliot’s reflection lifting his head up in surprise. _wait really??_

“There’s a shitload of tension there, and I’m pretty sure it’s the ‘we’re fucking’ kind, not ‘we wish we were fucking’.”

After a moment, Eliot texts, _maybe it’s just a casual thing_

“I don’t think Alice has done anything casually in her entire life. Or anyone.”

_she did penny_

Margo snorts. “That wasn’t casual, that was a revenge fuck.”

_whatever. all the more reason to give everyone some time before i start launching truth bombs_

Margo blows out a long breath. She’s tired and achy from last night, the deep lacerations on her arms hurt like a motherfucker, and she hasn’t had any coffee yet - but she doesn’t really want to start off the morning by yelling at Eliot. All the running around last night meant he had woken up in some serious pain - it had been a grueling walk from the infirmary back to their dorm, with the rain and melting snow turning the pathways into a slippery mess, the only saving grace being that Penny had managed to retrieve Eliot’s cane (and Margo’s axe) from the crossroads during one of his many trips back and forth. So she doesn’t say anything, just finishes up with the eyeshadow and moves on to the eyeliner. 

The phone buzzes again: _think q’s okay? did he seem off to you? quiet, shut-down?_

Margo pauses, looking down at the phone. “No. No, he was like that before.” 

She swallows, then leans forward, focuses on drawing a smooth line with the liquid eyeliner. “Dealing with the Monster was - rough, and it was rougher on Q than anyone else. I think it kind of fucked him up.”

She does the second eye, the fairy eye - she’s been thinking lately about dropping the glamour from it, just walking around with its full weirdness on display. People might stare, but that’s not without its own appeal - yeah, fucking look at me, the woman with the freaky eye, scratched-up face, axes on her back. Look at me funny, I fucking dare you.

The phone is silent, no texts coming through, and Margo looks at Eliot in the mirror. He’s staring down at his phone - no, she realizes, he’s staring down at his _hands_ , and his expression is achingly bleak.

She puts down the eyeliner, and turns around in her chair to face him. “Hey, none of that, just tuck-and-roll yourself right off that fucking guilt train - the Monster’s gone, we got Quentin back, and everything else is fixable, okay?”

Eliot glances up at her, then moves the phone onto the bed and casts the subtitles spell. _Right, sure. But when he looks at me, he must - maybe I should hold off -_

“No, goddammit, no, I can’t believe that you - didn’t we just learn that there’s no time, no one’s ever safe, bad things just happen with no fucking warning,” and so much for not yelling at Eliot, because she’s three seconds away from completely losing her shit but she can’t understand how Eliot can keep talking about time, about waiting, as though - 

“Eliot, for fuck’s sake, you got him back. Q was _dead_ , and you got him back, do you have any idea how lucky you are? You got a miracle dropped in your lap, and you’re waffling around like -” Margo has to stop and take a breath, she’s so pissed that she’s almost shaking. She moves her fingers in a pre-emptive spell, lighting all the candles in the room - the last thing she needs right now is for shit to start icing over.

_Bambi, Jesus Christ -_ Eliot shoves himself awkwardly across the bed until he’s sitting on the edge directly in front of her, his feet on the floor and their knees nearly touching, and then redoes the subtitles spell. _I’m going to talk to him, I promise, he deserves - I’m not waffling, okay? This is a waffle-free zone. I know how lucky I am, I get it. That’s why -_

Eliot leans forward, bumping his cupped hands against her own, clenched tightly in her lap. _Q’s back. He came back, he followed me back, and that’s_ everything. _So if he wants to marry Alice and have three kids and a fucking labradoodle, I’m fine with that -_

“That’s a load of crap,” Margo says.

_Alright, it’s a load of crap_ , Eliot says, _but it’s also - it would be okay, I would be okay. I would deal. As long as he’s - Margo, I woke up this morning and I was so sure last night was a dream, and then I saw him -_

He stops, gives her that fucking sincere look that gets her every time. _So I’m going to say something - I’ll admit it’s off-brand from my usual cynicism, but here it is: sometimes good things happen._

“Sometimes good things happen?” Margo says, trying and failing to bite down on a smile.

Eliot smiles back at her, his eyes bright. _It’s bold, radical even, but I stand by it._

“You know you just jinxed us so hard, right?” Margo says.

_So_ fucking _hard, I know_ , Eliot says. _But that’s the thing - all the bad shit? It’s coming anyway, no matter what we do, but sometimes - sometimes we get a win, and sometimes we hit the motherfucking jackpot._

He nudges his hands against hers again, and she unclenches her hands and clasps them around Eliot’s instead, the pool of light from the subtitles spell shimmering softly between them.

“Look at you, going all audacity of hope on me,” Margo says, around the lump in her throat.

_Well, I’m not discounting that fact that the painkillers I took have really started to kick in, but -_ Eliot takes a deep breath, looks at her intently.

_We’re going to go back to Fillory. We’re going find out what happened to Josh - and to Fen, to everybody. We’re going to crush the asshole who deposed them and get your fucking kingdom back, no matter what it takes - we’ll go back to the fairies, to the Lorians, we’ll_ make _them talk to us -_

“You know who we’re gonna talk to? The Brothers Grimm fangirl who took your voice,” Margo says. “She’s got enough mojo to have weathered the time-skip, and she likes making deals, so we can make it a twofer - get your voice back _and_ maybe pick up some ammunition to take out the shithead sitting on my throne.” 

_I’m on board_ , Eliot says. _And - and if there’s any way, any possibility of getting Josh back - I’ll find it, I promise._

Margo can’t look at him for a second, has to stare past Eliot at the boring beige wall behind him and just breathe through the pain. “I know you will.” 

_Sometimes good things happen, Bambi_ , Eliot says.

Margo nods slowly, meeting Eliot’s eyes again. “Yeah. Sometimes. And if they don’t, the least we can do is make some very bad things happen to the motherfuckers responsible.”

*

Julia opens the door of the tall wardrobe jammed into the corner of her bedroom. She turns back to look at Quentin, still standing in the doorway. “This way.”

The wardrobe is full of coats, none of which belong to her, she keeps all of her stuff in the closet - but the rooms in the Cottage always seem to brimming with the detritus of their former occupants, and the wardrobe is no different. Julia pushes the coats aside and steps into the wardrobe, moving her injured leg carefully.

Behind her, Quentin says, “Do we -”

“Just walk forward,” Julia says, and walks through the wooden back of the wardrobe into the storage room beyond it. She wrinkles her nose and sneezes - crossing through to the storage room usually makes her sneeze for some reason. She turns around in time to see Quentin appear behind her, his head bent and his eyes closed, clearly braced for a possible collision. 

“You made it,” Julia says, smiling at him.

Quentin opens his eyes and sneezes, and then looks around in impressed surprise. “Hey, nice walk-in closet you’ve got here.”

That’s an understatement - the storage room is almost the same size as Julia’s bedroom, a long narrow room wood-paneled like a 1980s basement and lined with shelves, with a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling and a small window set in the far wall. The shelves are half-full, scattered with boxes and bags and random objects, lamps and shoes and books, and weirder shit too, amulets and broken crystals and something Julia thinks is an owl skull. 

Julia watches as Quentin takes in the details: no door behind them, just a blank wall, no light switch to be found (the light is always on, whenever Julia comes in), and last but sure as shit not least, the view through the window - a snowy forest at early evening, the wind tossing snowflakes against the window with blizzard-worthy strength. 

“Wait, where are we?” Quentin says.

“Not sure,” Julia says. “One of the third-years told me about it my second week here, back when everyone thought I was a Squib - I think she felt sorry for me, and figured I at least deserved to know about the extra closet space. It’s not the Cottage - or at least, it’s not the Cottage where it physically is now, but maybe it’s just a different ‘when’, not ‘where’. Who knows?”

She points to the shelf where she’d put Quentin’s belongings - two duffle bags and a few boxes (it had seemed like a ridiculously small amount at the time, like the sum total of Quentin’s physical presence in the world should have taken up more than a single fucking shelf). “There’s your stuff. Your phone should be in that box.”

“Thanks,” Quentin says, and starts rifling through the box. “You haven’t tried to figure out where this place is? I would’ve thought it’d be the kind of mystery that drives you nuts.”

Julia shrugs, rubs at her upper arm, the soreness just under the skin. “I had other shit to do.”

“Like what?” Quentin asks absently, lifting his phone out of the box and turning it on.

“Oh, like smoking too much, and not sleeping enough, and working out how to bring someone back from the dead,” Julia says. 

Quentin twists to look at her, his eyes widening. “Right, yeah. Jules -”

“I also drank a lot of wine with Margo and Eliot, after Eliot got out of the infirmary,” Julia says. “We watched almost the entire run of _Deep Space Nine_.”

“It _is_ the best one,” Quentin says.

“Eliot likes _Enterprise_ better.”

“That’s just because he has a crush on Trip,” Quentin says. “Jules - are you okay?”

“Am _I_ okay?” She laughs, can’t help it. “Yeah, I’m okay, I’m - As of this morning? I’m okay.”

Quentin’s still watching her worriedly, so Julia says, “You know, I got magic back when I was - when I was trying to say good-bye to you, like that was the price, like that was a fair fucking trade.”

She turns away, stares out at the snow flying past the window. “Like - I finally got all the things I used to want: before, I had magic but not Brakebills, and then I got Brakebills but no magic, and now - now I had both, but -” her voice is climbing upwards, on the edge of cracking, “- but not you. And it all seemed so - I mean, what’s the fucking point? What’s the point if we can’t change the things that really matter?”

”Hey,” Quentin says, soft, stepping towards her.

Julia clears her throat and turns back to look at Quentin, trying for a smile. “So, anyway. I kept your stuff, and I made Fogg give me six months before he pulled the trigger on anything official. He wasn’t thrilled, but - he had his hands full what with the Library falling apart and the surge in the ambient, so honestly I think he was glad to put off the paperwork.”

Quentin’s frowning at her, unconvinced, but then he nods and looks away, back down at his phone. “Sure, right. All those forms, and it can’t look great for the school, having to file a code seven.”

“What?” Julia says. It feels like being hit with a bucket of ice water.

“You know, student magically exploded,” Quentin says, still looking at his phone. “Uh, too soon?”

“Yeah, that’s the other thing it means,” Julia says, keeping her voice as flat as she can, because -

Quentin shrugs one shoulder, says, “Oh, right - it was just a joke, Jules, relax,” but his jaw’s gone tense and he won’t look at her -

“Q,” Julia says. “Q, is - are you - I know things were - hard, with the Monster -” 

“Look, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have - it really was just a joke, okay?” Quentin gives her a sharp, eye-rolling glance, but he can’t keep up the eye contact, his gaze sliding away.

Julia swallows, says, “Okay. But - you know that it’s also okay if it wasn’t a joke, right?”

Quentin turns away from her, leaning against the shelf and staring down at his phone as though it holds the secrets of life and death, which - he’s probably not even getting a fucking signal in here. “Jules, I’m fine.”

Julia stands there and looks at him, her throat tight, her hands empty and useless at her sides, because this is an old, familiar monster, but it’s not one she can fight, not one she can kill or banish or find a spell to defeat, and she - it’s just that they’d fucking _brought Q back from the dead last night_ , and she’d thought - stupidly, naively - that maybe things would be okay, that everything would be okay now (and shouldn’t she know better than that, shouldn’t she have fucking learned?). But this - this isn’t something she can fix. 

The wind howls outside, rattling the glass panes in the window, and Julia looks over - and shit, the wooden windowsill is sprouting tiny leaves and shoots, growing quickly and twining their way up along the window and the wall. 

Julia heaves a furious sigh, starts to raise her hands for a spell to burn off the charge. Then she remembers - she reaches into her jacket pocket instead, pulls out the deck of cards that she’s been keeping there. She lays them flat in her left hand, and uses her right to cast a showy shuffling spell. 

The cards fly up into the air, flapping and fluttering in a figure-eight pattern, and Quentin looks up at the sound. They watch the cards complete their dance and then land, one by one, back in a neat stack in the palm of Julia’s hand. 

“I’ve been holding on to these for you,” Julia says, and stretches her hand out, offers the deck to Quentin.

Quentin looks at the cards for a long moment, and then reaches out and takes them from Julia’s hand. “Thanks.”

“Thank you for coming back,” Julia says. She means to say it lightly, off-handedly, but instead her voice wobbles all over the place and Quentin finally looks at her again, then steps forward and hugs her hard.

“Thank you for bringing me back,” Quentin says. “I mean it, I - Jules, I’m fine, I’m fine, I don’t want to - you don’t have to worry about me -” He’s talking too fast, words tumbling over each other, and maybe he’s trying to convince himself as much as her.

She hugs him back, tries to blink away the stinging in her eyes. “Okay, okay - just. I’m here, alright?”

“Yeah, well, same,” Quentin says. He pulls away slowly, looks down at the deck of cards in his hand. “Um - so. So, you’re gonna have to catch me up on everything I’ve missed - want to give me the recap?”

“Right, yeah,” Julia says, swiping a hand across her eyes. “Why don’t we get your stuff out of here in the meantime?”

“Sure,” Quentin says, and shoves the phone and cards in the pockets of his scrubs before picking up a box and handing it to her, then grabbing one for himself. “Like what about you and Penny, how’s that going?”

“It’s not,” Julia says, and walks through the wall and back into the wardrobe in her bedroom. She pushes her way past the coats, then dumps the box on an empty patch of floor.

Quentin shoulders his way out of the wardrobe a few seconds later. “Shit, sorry, I thought - I saw you guys holding hands -”

“I don’t know what we are right now,” Julia says. “The thing is, I really - I like him, I care about him, and there are some days when I want - ” When she just fucking _wants_ , okay, wants to fall into Penny’s arms, wants his mouth on hers and his hands on her skin, wants to pretend that they can have something easy and uncomplicated and good - the memory of the ritual in the tent, the way he’d looked at her -

“But in the middle of that clusterfuck with the monsters and the Library, I could have been a goddess again, I could have done something, I could have -” She stops, looking at Quentin; she can tell from the way his mouth turns down that he knows what she didn’t say. _I could have stopped you from dying._

“Penny didn’t know what was going to happen,” Quentin says, putting his box on the floor.

“He knew that shit might go down,” Julia says. “And he chose to -” to make me less, she wants to say, but that’s not entirely right. 

She says, “He chose to _keep_ me - and to keep me out of the action, and it makes me think that to him I’m just the Julia he gets to have, you know? The Julia he gets to save, like that makes up for -” For the dead Julia, that other Julia who Penny had fallen in love with, the one who had gotten into Brakebills, who had never summoned Reynard. 

“I’m sorry,” Quentin says.

Julia shrugs, turns back towards the wardrobe. “So - I can’t do that, I can’t be just the girl he saves. That’s not going to work.”

She walks back through to the storage room, sneezes, and grabs the last box off the shelf. She makes a mental note to come back and get rid of all the leaves and new growth on the windowsill - she’s not sure how time works in the storage room, and she doesn’t want to pop back in a week from now to find the whole place _Jumanji_ ’d. 

Quentin walks through the wall, eyes open this time, and comes over to pick up the two duffle bags. “Did you talk to Penny about it?”

“Nah, I’ve heard communication is a real relationship-killer,” Julia says. She walks back through to her bedroom, Quentin following behind her.

“I’ve been kind of - single-minded lately,” Julia says, more seriously. She puts the box down on the floor next to the others, while Quentin nudges the piles of books aside on the bed to make room for the duffle bags, then unzips them and starts pulling out clothes. He holds up a pack of cigarettes for a second, and then puts it back.

“We’ve been spending a lot of time digging through tiny back-room magic shops in Vancouver and Venice and Ho Chi Minh City, and trying to decipher ancient Sumerian and Old High German, and - not talking.” She tilts her head towards Quentin, quirks a smile at him. “On the other hand, you can’t argue with our results.”

Quentin smiles back, but it fades quickly. “Jules, tell me about the spell. And -” He hesitates, then says, “And tell me what happened to Eliot’s voice.”

“Maybe you should ask Eliot about that part,” Julia says, raising her eyebrows.

“Or you could tell me right now,” Quentin counters.

“Fine,” Julia says - it’s not like it’s a secret. “We needed your blood for the spell, and Eliot got a vial of it from the witch in the Darkling Woods. His voice was the trade.”

Something shutters in Quentin’s face, and he drops the clothes he’s holding back into the bag. “And you all let him?”

“No one _let_ him,” Julia says. “No one even knew he was going to do it until it was already done. Margo was really fucking pissed, even just that he went to Fillory without her, never mind -”

“Why - what do you mean, why would she be -” Quentin says.

“Oh, fuck,” Julia says. “You don’t know about Fillory.”

Quentin stares at her. “What happened to Fillory?”

*

“We can wait outside,” Margo says for the third time.

_We’re not waiting outside in the fucking rain_ , Eliot says. He leans against the stair railing, stares down at the floor - wow, those patterns in the doormat, truly fascinating, he could look at them all day -

“We won’t be in the rain, we’ll stand in the doorway, or we’ll do the shield spell again,” Margo says. “Or - I think I still remember that tent spell we used for the orgy at Glastonbury -”

_We’re not waiting outside_ , Eliot says. _I’m fine. This is fine._

“Okay, but like for real fine? Or like dog-in-a-room-on-fire fine?” Margo says.

“You guys want me to bring some food over there?” Penny asks from where he’s sitting at the dining table, and isn’t it just fucking fantastic that Eliot gets an audience for this particular humiliation? At least it’s early enough that no one else in the Cottage has managed to drag their hungover asses out of bed yet.

“Are you actually offering, or are you just being a dick?” Margo says. 

“I’m offering, Jesus,” Penny says, aggrieved.

_Would the both of you please shut the fuck up and give me a minute_ , Eliot says.

He closes his eyes, but that doesn’t help - he can still - it still _smells_ like the Cottage, like spilled drinks and pot smoke mixed with old house and the ozone-y scent of magic - fuck, _fuck_ \- he opens his eyes, goes back to cataloging the patterns in the doormat. His hands are sweating where he’s holding them together for the subtitles spell, and his chest is tightening, his breathing getting shallower, that horrible claustrophobic feeling (trapped trapped you’re trapped you’re back in that place it got you again -) building with every second. 

He drops his hands apart, lets the spell break, and wraps one hand around the stair railing instead, holding on tight. He tries Julia’s trick - breathe in and count, breathe out and count, slow it down (Julia had said, “When it gets really bad, I try to focus hard on something else - math problems usually.” Eliot had winced and said, “I’m not much of a math guy,” and she’d rolled her eyes at him, had said,“So pick something that works - a song, a poem, think outside the fucking box.”); and so he stares at the floor and breathes and lets his mind run through the steady beat of ‘How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman -’, until he’s got a handle on it. The trapped feeling isn’t gone, but he can probably make it through breakfast without hyperventilating and diving for the door. 

Eliot raises his head and lets go of the stair railing, reaching for his cane where it’s propped against the side of the stairs. He looks at Margo where she’s been oh-so-casually hovering next to him, and gives her the ‘OK’ sign. 

She smiles at him, relieved. “Thank Christ, I’m starving.”

“Oh - hey.” The voice comes from above him, and Eliot turns and looks up, and his breath catches again - but this time it’s because Quentin and Julia are standing at the top of the staircase. 

It’s just - it’s so fucking good to see Q again, every time, and Eliot keeps getting knocked sideways by it, the sheer relief of it - so he stands and stares, frozen in place, and Quentin’s looking down at him, not moving either, his eyes dark and startled -

And then Margo bends in close and whispers, “Are you fucking reenacting _Titanic_? Pull it together,” and Eliot whips his head around and gives her the dirtiest look in his arsenal.

She makes a face at him and spins away towards the table where Penny’s sitting, calling back over her shoulder, “Morning Julia, morning Q, better move fast if you want any hashbrowns, because time and tide and Margo wait for no man. Or woman.”

Eliot looks back up in time to see Quentin rolling his eyes and Julia grinning as they start making their way down the stairs.

“Message received, and good morning to you too, Margo. And to you, Eliot,” Julia says. 

“Hey, Eliot,” Quentin says.

Eliot smiles and nods at both of them, then follows Margo to the table, trying to hide how heavily he’s leaning on his cane. Today’s a bad pain day, no surprise after last night - even though the painkillers have muffled it down to a dull ache, his leg still feels worse than it has in weeks.

He can feel Quentin’s eyes on him as he gets his food and takes a seat, so he’s mostly ready for it when Quentin says, “The cane - it’s not just because of what happened last night, is it?”

Eliot shakes his head, looking down at the syrup he’s pouring onto his pancakes, a task that obviously requires his full concentration; then sighs and puts down the syrup, and moves his hands through the subtitles spell. _No, it’s a fixture. Maybe a permanent one, they’re not sure yet. Turns out getting un-possessed by being stabbed with a magical weapon can cause - complications._

“Shit. I’m sorry,” Quentin says. 

Eliot forces himself to meet Quentin’s eyes, shrugs as carelessly as he can manage. _On the bright side, it fits in perfectly with my aesthetic, n’est-ce pas?_

Quentin half-smiles, says, “Yeah, totally - very dashing, you’re putting Oscar Wilde to shame,” but then adds, all in a rush, “With the ram’s head on the top - it looks like the one you had before. At the mosaic.”

And Eliot - blinks, isn’t sure what to - they never talk about the mosaic, they’ve never talked about it, full stop (except for that stupid fucking crack that Eliot had made about life partners, and the look Quentin had given him had been so sad and resigned that Eliot had never said a single word about it again); at first, he’d expected Quentin to want to talk about it, had expected to be cornered and have the whole thing dragged out and dissected, had waited in nervous and defiant dread - but Quentin had never brought it up, not once, after that day in the throne room, and Eliot had told himself that he was relieved, that he was grateful - that they’d both decided to pretend that it had never happened, which was clearly for the best. And it wasn’t as if there’d been a lot of time to sit around and talk, what with the quest and the fairies, and then the revolt in Fillory, and the election - and then they’d gone to Blackspire, and there’d been no time for anything at all.

(Except for - standing in a park, dizzy and disoriented, and Q standing right in front of him, saying, “no, bullshit,” not believing him, and Eliot had said, “fifty years,” had said, “peaches and plums, motherfucker,” had reached out and smacked Q’s shoulder in pure frustration - “I’m alive in here -” and Quentin had _seen_ him -)

“What’s the mosaic?” Penny says, around a mouthful of food.

Quentin glares murder at him, and Julia says quickly, “Uh, it was a part of the key quest, one of the keys we found before you got here.”

Eliot taps his knuckles on the table to gets Quentin’s attention, then says, _It is the same one - at least, it’s from the same place - when they said I’d need a cane, I told Margo about that shop, you know the one -_

“Fillory’s Finest Furniture,” Quentin says, smiling a little, and Eliot can _hear_ the capitalizations. “God, that guy was such an asshole. I think the whole street threw a party when his daughter took over.”

_He did make excellent furniture, though_ , Eliot says, smiling back at him. The bed that they’d bought from him had lasted decades, through some _extremely_ rough treatment, if Eliot remembers correctly. 

(And maybe - Q had followed him back from the Underworld, had climbed into Eliot’s bed last night, now he’s talking about the mosaic - so maybe, maybe -)

“Well, his great-great-whatevers still run the place, and still make custom pieces on demand, so I -” Margo stops for a second, then forges on, “- so I sent a bunny to Josh and he put in a rush order and brought it through, back before everything went to shit over there.”

“Julia filled me in,” Quentin says. “I - Margo, I’m sorry about Josh. And Fen, and -”

Margo slices her hand through the air in a sharp, decisive motion. “We’re working on it, capisce? We’re gonna take back the kingdom, figure out what the fuck happened - and since you brought it up, we could really use everyone’s help on this, now that we can all cross ‘resurrect Q’ off of our to-do lists.”

“I’m in,” Julia says. “Just - uh, we have to go to Vermont first.” 

She looks at Penny with an apologetic smile; Penny shrugs and says, “Sure, Vermont, why not?”

“Actually, I think the question is: Vermont - why?” Margo says.

“I’m going to go see my mom,” Quentin says. “I called her and she was kind of - it’s been a really long time since - anyway, I said I’d meet her for coffee this morning in Burlington.”

_But - what does your mom think you’re doing in Vermont? She doesn’t know that you can catch the Traveler Express to drop in for an hour_ , Eliot says.

“I told her that we were on a road-trip to visit the Ben & Jerry’s factory,” Quentin says, and then sighs when Eliot and Margo stare at him in incredulous horror. “It was literally the only thing I could think of that’s in Vermont.”

_Well, despite the terrible damage it’ll do to our reputations to be party to such an endeavour, we’ll come with you_ , Eliot says.

“Oh, will we?” Margo says, but she relents in the face of Eliot’s subtly pleading look. “Sure, whatever - who knows, maybe that’s what my life has been missing all this time: mountains and snow and organic cheese.”

“Great, a kinda-for-real road-trip,” Julia says. “We actually should stop at the Ben & Jerry’s factory on the way back.” She throws up her hands at the looks she gets in response. “Come on! What, you guys don’t like ice cream?”

_And what about your dad?_ Eliot asks.

There’s a flash of shock and pain, like Eliot’s slapped him, and then Quentin’s face goes blank. “My dad died.”

_Fuck. Oh_ fuck _, Q - I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I -_ Eliot says, his stomach clenching.

“It’s okay, it’s not a - it was last year, while you were - how could you have known?” Quentin says, but his voice is flat and he’s hunching in on himself, that beaten, shut-down look Eliot had seen on him in the infirmary - like he’s hurting, hurting badly, and doesn’t expect anything but more of the same. 

“Shit, I thought I told you -” Margo says.

_Maybe you did_ , Eliot says, _maybe I just -_ and stops before he shapes the words ‘maybe I just forgot’, because he might be the shittiest fucking person in the world but he doesn’t need to announce it to the room. 

He turns back to Quentin, tries to explain: _I was on a lot of drugs, at the beginning, there was a lot of - I’m sorry about your dad -_

“It’s fine, don’t worry,” Quentin says, not quite looking at him. “You weren’t here.”

It’s supposed to be a reassurance, but it feels like an accusation, and Eliot stares at him, swallowing hard. He feels sick, too hot, the claustrophobia tightening down around him again, and he grabs onto the table, focuses on the feeling of the wood under his hands.

“Uh, I’m - I think I’m gonna - can I bum a cigarette?” Quentin says, turning to Julia. 

“Oh. Sure,” Julia says, her mouth twisting worriedly, and pulls a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of the pocket of her jacket and hands it to him. “Are you -”

“Yeah, I’m good, I’ll be -” Quentin doesn’t bother to finish his sentence, just stands up and bee-lines for the front door. 

Eliot watches him go, and when the front door slams shut he shoves himself to his feet, biting down on the grunt of pain that wants to escape. He casts the subtitles spell, says to Margo, _I need some air_ , then grabs his cane and heads for the back door before she can answer.

“Eliot! Hey, you didn’t eat anything - for fuck’s sake -” he hears Margo say behind him, but he doesn’t turn around. 

He goes out the back door, closing it behind him; then leans back against it, tipping his head back and taking in gulps of cold damp air - so much for making it through breakfast, so much for his new-found fucking optimism. 

He stands under the overhang and stares out at the rain, the empty stretch of yard covered in ice and mud and melting snow - and tries not to think of Quentin smoking outside alone by the front door, the entirety of the Cottage (and too much time, and too much blood) between them.

*

The café is playing what sounds like a Beatles compilation album performed by a woman with a throaty jazz singer’s voice, accompanied by banjos and harmonicas and what might be whale song? - and Quentin’s finding it a little distracting.

“Sorry, what?” he asks, and his mom sighs deeply, shaking her head.

“I was just asking if you could try harder, this time,” she says. 

“Try harder at what?” Quentin says, although it’s almost not worth asking, he could just take his pick - his mom’s default state is wanting him to try harder.

“At keeping in contact,” his mom says. “If you could stop going months without calling, or even sending a text or an email -”

“I said I was sorry, I was - there was no signal a lot of the time,” Quentin says. He’d made up a story about a backpacking trip, had tried to keep it short and the details vague; had let his mom carry the conversation as much as possible. She hadn’t seemed to notice - then again, she’s pretty used to _his_ default state being sullen and uncommunicative.

“Just one email a month,” his mom says. “That’s all I’m asking, I don’t think that’s unreasonable. I know things have probably been - what with your dad -”

“Things have been fine,” Quentin says. “I was just busy.” He pokes at the remains of his vegan carrot cake with his fork. The Beatles jazz singer lady warbles, _Hey Jude, don’t make it bad, take a sad song and make it better -_ (his dad used to sing that song to him. He had sung it to Teddy - stop, don’t think about it.)

“Well, I’d appreciate it if you could drag yourself away from whatever it is that’s keeping you so busy to let me know you’re okay -”

“Jesus, yes, fine, I’ll email,” Quentin says. He jabs at the cake and the fork screeches against the plate. “I mean, I’m here now, aren’t I?”

His mom looks at him for a long time. Quentin stares at his plate.

“Yeah, you’re here now,” his mom says, finally. “Quentin -”

“Hey, there’s Julia,” Quentin says. “I’d better go.” He’d made Julia promise to show up and give him an out after forty-five minutes had gone by (“ - otherwise I swear to God, I’m going to throw a smoke-bomb and ninja-roll out the nearest window.”)

His mom turns in her chair to look - Julia’s standing in the doorway of the café, Penny and Eliot and Margo crowded around her; with the possible exception of Julia, none of them look like they’d ever so much as deign to consider the idea of going on a road-trip to the Ben & Jerry’s factory.

“Right, Julia,” his mom says. “It’s been forever since I’ve seen her. And those are Julia’s friends?”

Quentin takes a deep breath, lets it out. “They’re _my_ friends.”

“That’s what I meant,” his mom says, and gives him an exasperated look. “Quentin, that’s what I meant, do you always have to -” She stops, pressing her lips together.

The part of Quentin that’s still sixteen, that’s always going to be sixteen, wants to snap, “do I always have to _what_ , Mom?” 

(The first time he had been hospitalized, his mom had been visiting and he had been trying to tell her about a scene from _The Secret Sea_ , about the small gallant ship sailing out of the abyss, and she had cut him off and said, “Quentin. I don’t care about Fillory.”

And he had stared at her, had wanted to say, “Yeah, no shit, of course you don’t, why would you? But _I_ care about Fillory - it’s the one thing in the awful endless gray landscape that is my life right now that I care about, so can’t you listen to me talk about it for ten fucking minutes?”

He hadn’t said that. He’d said, “Okay.”)

But he’s not sixteen anymore; and from the perspective of adulthood, from the perspective of someone who’s sat across from his own stubborn, inexplicably angry teenage son and tried desperately to connect, he knows that that memory’s not completely fair - his mom had been worried and exhausted, and had probably already been listening to him ramble about Fillory for a lot longer than ten minutes.

He could tell her the truth, he could say, “They’re my friends. They saved my life, and not just metaphorically. No one came to Dad’s funeral, but they came to mine - they came to my funeral and then they nearly died opening a fucking door to the Underworld, and they brought me back out. I was dead and they brought me back, and I don’t - I don’t know how I can ever be worthy of that -”

And maybe it would make things better between them, or maybe it wouldn’t - for his mom to know about magic, about Fillory, about the truly weird shit that makes up the bulk of Quentin’s life - maybe his mom would end up hating him for telling her, for smashing her understanding of the world to pieces. Quentin’s learned that lesson pretty fucking well by now - that magic coming back can make everything worse; that he and Alice can love each other, but disappoint each other over and over again; that he can spend fifty happy years with Eliot, and still turn out to not be enough for him.

He’s not going to tell his mom the truth, not this morning anyway - he’s not brave enough to take on the risk of trying and failing, not with the dark tide that rises up in his head as high as it is right now. 

But he can try a little bit - he can try. Because yesterday he was dead, and today he’s alive, and his mom’s alive, and that’s not a small thing.

Quentin says, “Mom. I have to go, but I’ll email, okay? Once a month. And I’ll - I’ll come back to Burlington for Mother’s Day in May, and we can get lunch or something.”

“Okay,” his mom says. “Okay, fine, thank you, that’d be nice.” 

She leans forward and kisses him on the cheek, and he blinks at her, they don’t usually -

“Take care of yourself, okay?” she says.

“Yeah, you too,” Quentin says, and gets up to go meet Julia and the others at the door.

“So how’d it go?” Julia says.

They’re walking down a side street, looking for somewhere quiet and out-of-the-way enough that no one will notice five people disappearing into thin air. At least it’s not raining here, although it’s cold and gray and the air has a heavy, wet feeling, like it’s about to start snowing.

“It was okay,” Quentin says. “It was weird, that she doesn’t know about - why I was gone, but - it was okay. I said I’d come back in May.” 

“Oh, good,” Julia says, linking her arm with his - she knows that ‘okay’ is a pretty high rating when it comes to interactions between him and his mom.

“Here, over here,” Penny says, and they follow him around a corner into a mostly empty parking lot.

Quentin takes a quick look around - he can’t see anyone, but Margo says, “Let me cast a concealment spell, just in case -”

She raises her hands, and then a chunk explodes out of the brick wall a couple of feet from her face. She flinches away from the dust and flying shards of brick, yells, “What the fuck -”

Quentin lets go of Julia’s arm and spins around - there are four people standing at the other end of the parking lot, three men and a woman, their hands moving in a casting.

“That’s her,” one of the men says.

“Get the Traveler first,” the woman says.

“Mother _fucker_ ,” Julia says, even as she lifts her hands, a shield spell spinning into place in front of the five of them. “It’s Gareth’s crew -”

“Who?” Quentin says.

Margo wipes brick dust off her face and pulls her axes out of her bag, then looks sideways at Eliot. “I told you, you fucking jinxed us.”

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mention of suicide in this chapter: In his conversation with Julia, Quentin references a 'code seven' at Brakebills, which is mentioned by Dean Fogg in "Be the Penny".
> 
> _But it also says in this file that he left because of a code seven._
> 
> _Student suicide. Or he magically exploded. I don't know why they use the same damn code for both._
> 
> There's also a reference to Quentin being hospitalized during his conversation with his mother.
> 
> _The Audacity of Hope_ is the name of Barack Obama's book.
> 
> A Squib is a person with no magic who was born to magic-having parents in the _Harry Potter_ series.
> 
> Julia's line about what's the point of magic if it can't change things is referencing Quentin's similar question in "Mendings, Major and Minor".
> 
> Julia's mention of Venice and Old High German are references from _The Magicians_ books, and Vancouver because that's where the series is filmed and I think I'm funny.
> 
> Margo's line about the dog-in-a-room-on-fire is referencing the cartoon by KC Green.
> 
> "How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman -" are lyrics from the musical _Hamilton_.
> 
> "Hey Jude, don’t make it bad, take a sad song and make it better" are lyrics from the song "Hey Jude" by The Beatles.
> 
> Quentin's line about throwing a smoke-bomb and ninja-rolling out the window is a reference to an xkcd cartoon.


	8. Alea Iacta Est

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She stops, nailing Julia with an iron stare, a High King stare. “This is fucked up, you know that, right? This is fucked up, and it is actively fucking us up, because Quentin is dead and gone and the longer we spend trying to bring him back and failing, the harder it gets to actually deal with it.”
> 
> Julia takes a breath. Counts - _1, 2, 3_ ; lets it out. “I’m not giving up yet.”

Julia whispers a word in Aramaic and stretches her arms apart, curling her index and middle fingers in, and the shield expands into a dome - just in time to repel the paralysis spell in the form of a spidery black net hurtling towards them. 

The net disintegrates into dust on contact with the shield, and Gareth’s lackeys scatter across the parking lot as Eliot and Quentin start throwing battle magic at them. From the corner of her eye Julia sees Margo raising her axes high - and then Penny’s hand is tight on Julia’s arm, and they’re Traveling.

They’re standing behind a clump of shrubbery in a small parkette, the same one in Burlington that they’d first Traveled to this morning. Julia’s hands are still raised in the shield spell - she drags in a breath, starts to shout, “Are you fucking -”

Penny’s gone, and Julia drops her arms to her sides and tries very hard not to howl in frustration. She stands in the parkette, gritting her teeth, and counts. Five seconds, ten, twenty - and then Penny reappears with the others in tow, his hands tight on Margo and Quentin’s shoulders while Eliot holds onto Margo’s arm; Quentin and Eliot are both covered in grime and snow, and Margo’s in the middle of snapping at Penny, “- the rest of us like acceptable fucking casualties!”

“What happened?” Julia says.

“One of those shitweasels pulled a gun is what happened,” Margo says. 

“Guess you two are the only ones they care about taking alive,” Quentin says, then gestures between himself and Eliot. “We hit the deck, but Margo raised up a mini version of the Night's Watch Wall in the middle of the parking lot, it was amazing -”

“It was fucking epic, but we only needed it because _you_ bugged out with the person who was casting the fucking shield spell,” Margo says, glaring at Penny.

“Whatever, yell at me later - we can’t stay here,” Penny says, then looks at Julia. “Brakebills?”

Julia stares at him, then reaches out to grab Quentin’s hand. “Yeah.” (Priorities: get behind Brakebills’ wards now, fight later.)

They Travel - and then there’s a weird _twanging_ sensation, like thumping hard off the side of a bouncy castle - and they’re standing on the edge of a snow-covered field next to a row of tall pine trees, and surrounded by a babble of anxious voices.

Penny says, “Uh, what -”

Julia turns around to see what looks like the entire population of Brakebills standing in huddles around the edge of the field. It’s still raining, although the amount of shields criss-crossing overhead means that they’re essentially covered by a patchwork umbrella of magic, and there’s a general sense of buzzing unease. Julia’s reaching out to tap the nearest student on the shoulder when someone calls her name.

“Julia! There you guys are, I’ve been -” Todd rushes towards her. “You have to leave. Now.”

“What, why? What’s going on?” Julia says.

“There’s an infestation of fire spiders so they kicked everybody out and put the wards in full lock-down, but that’s no biggie - ” Todd says. 

“That’s no biggie?” Penny says. “Did you just say _fire spiders_?”

“Oh, that’s fabulous, we’ll all hang out in the snow and fiddle while Brakebills burns,” Margo says.

“They don’t set things on fire, they burrow under your skin and - it’s not important,” Todd says. “Although if anyone feels any sudden burning sensations, you should definitely alert the faculty, and also take off all your clothes and cover yourself in snow like, really really fast.”

“Oh, fuck,” Julia says, looking past Todd’s shoulder.

“I know, I’m going to have nightmares for weeks,” Todd says, “and before you say it, we’re pretty sure it actually wasn’t the first years this time, but that’s not - the important thing is for you guys to get the hell out of here, because -”

“Irene McAllistair’s here,” Julia says.

“Yes!” Todd says. “And Fogg told me to make sure you -”

“And she’s seen us. She’s heading this way right now,” Julia says.

“ _Crap_ ,” Todd says, with deep feeling, but Julia isn’t looking at him - she’s watching Irene McAllistair make her way towards them, weaving through the crowds of students like a shark gliding through a coral reef. She looks like she’s just dropped in from a press conference - sleek hair, red lipstick and a sharply tailored navy and cream suit, with a matching umbrella swinging at her side like a sword.

“Julia,” Irene says, and smiles. “It’s been a long time.”

The last time Julia had seen Irene, Julia had been on her knees, the invisible hand of Irene’s magic clamped tightly around her throat. “Congresswoman McAllistair,” Julia says. “It sure has.”

Julia doesn’t take her eyes off of Irene, but she senses the others moving closer - Penny and Quentin on either side of her, Margo and Eliot at her back. If Irene tries anything -

“I was paying Henry a visit when this unfortunate situation with the spiders came to light,” Irene says. “Not exactly an auspicious start to the morning, is it?”

“No,” Julia says. 

Irene’s gaze shifts sideways and her eyes widen. “Oh - Quentin. I see the rumors of your death have been greatly exaggerated.”

“That was just a misunderstanding - I wasn’t dead, I was lost in the Mirror World,” Quentin says. 

“And your friends hopped through the looking glass and put Humpty-Dumpty back together again? How nice for you,” Irene says. She looks back at Julia. “Loyalty is such a crucial quality in life. But where’s your other friend? The girl from - Fillmore?”

Julia doesn’t say anything, and Irene smiles again, sharp. “Did you lose her too?”

Julia hears Margo suck in a breath behind her, and braces herself - but then Dean Fogg is maneuvering through the crowd towards them, calling out, “Irene! The faculty have set up a temporary chalet with coffee and tea, if you’d like to join us?” 

Irene doesn’t even acknowledge him; she’s running her eyes over first Julia, and then the others - Julia has a sudden irrational urge to shove them all behind her, to hide them, keep them safe from that cold assessing stare. 

“In fact, you’re all looking kind of rough,” Irene says. “Did you run into some trouble this morning, by any chance?”

“Nothing we couldn’t handle, but thanks for the concern.” This time Julia’s the one who smiles. “By the way, how’s that rash of yours doing?”

Irene stares at her, her red lips pulled back in something that looks more like a snarl now (oh the shark has pretty teeth, dear) - the wind tosses Julia’s hair around her face, but she doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, won’t be the first to look away -

“Irene,” Fogg says, hurrying up to them. “Please - why don’t we get in out of this wind?”

Irene turns to him, says, “Of course, Henry, that sounds wonderful, lead the way,” and playfully slips her arm through his.

Julia lets out a long, slow breath, pretends not to see the warning look that Fogg shoots her way before he walks off with Irene on his arm. 

Irene glances over her shoulder as they go, says, “Till next time, Julia.”

Julia watches as they disappear into the mass of milling students.

“Bye, bitch,” Margo says, under her breath. Then she says, her voice even lower, barely audible, “Julia. It was hers, wasn’t it?”

Julia runs a hand over her face, pushes her hair back into place, and then turns around to look at Margo. “Yeah,” she says, equally quietly.

Margo nods, doesn’t even look surprised; she’s still holding her axes in each hand, her face grim. 

But Penny says, “It was hers?” in a whisper-shout, and Eliot’s eyes are wide with alarm as he glances between Julia and the direction in which Irene and Fogg have vanished, and they can’t have this fight yet, not here -

Julia spins to face Penny and says, “We have to go to Kady’s.”

“Julia, what the fuck -” Penny says, his eyes burning into hers.

“We need to go somewhere safe,” Julia says. “I don’t know how they found us in Vermont, but that means they can probably find us anywhere, and we don’t know how long it’ll take for them to let us back under the wards. Kady’s place is warded up like Fort goddamn Knox, so - let’s go there.”

“Fine,” Penny says, after a couple of long, tense seconds.

“And hey, once we’re at Kady’s, maybe someone could tell me _what the actual fuck_ is going on,” Quentin says. 

Five minutes later they’re all standing in the middle of Kady’s empty loft, and it is _on_ \- right place, right time: Welcome to Thunderdome.

“So - when you said you got a dragon egg to sacrifice for the spell, what you actually meant was you stole an egg from the fucking mob,” Quentin says, staring at Julia, narrow-eyed and furious. 

“Gareth and his merry band of dipshits are two-bit dealers and smugglers - they have one crappy boat with a permanent portal, they’re definitely not the mob,” Julia says.

“No, it’s worse that that,” Penny says. His voice is hard, his arms crossed over his chest. “Because we stole an egg from Irene fucking McAllistair.”

 _Did you know it was hers before you took it?_ Eliot asks.

“Yes, I knew,” Julia says, and Quentin huffs out a disbelieving breath.

Margo leans against the back of the couch, spinning one of her axes idly. “Did you take it _because_ it was hers?” 

“No,” Julia says firmly. “We needed that egg for the spell, it was the only thing powerful enough that we had any chance of getting access to.” She shrugs. “The fact that it belonged to Irene was just a bonus.”

“A bonus?” Quentin says. “Are you fucking joking?”

“Keeping a massively strong source of magic out of the hands of a murderous, slave-owning psychopath? Yeah, I’m calling that a win,” Julia says. 

_Of course, now the murderous, slave-owning psychopath is gunning for us_ , Eliot says.

“She was already gunning for us,” Julia says. “It was only a matter of time - she would have strangled us all at Blackspire without batting a fucking eye, she had prices put on our heads last year -”

“That was when she had the Library backing her up, you said that that’s over, there’s a truce now -” Quentin says. 

Julia steps forward, shaking her head, her hands curling into fists - this is the part the rest of them have to understand. “No, no fucking way. We were already permanently on her shitlist, okay? She owns a chair that decapitates people so that she can grind their bones into powder - that is, once she’s done sawing off their fucking limbs. Do you really think she’s the type who lets things go? Especially things like half of her family being knifed in her dining room?”

 _Point taken_ , Eliot says. _Point gruesomely made, but point taken._

“Look, I appreciate a blood feud as much as the next girl, but it would have been great to get a heads-up before you turned an eventual threat into a really fucking immediate one,” Margo says. 

Quentin’s still glaring at her. “I just can’t believe that you would do something so - so stupidly dangerous, and illegal -”

“Illegal?” Julia says. “Seriously? You think there are legalities surrounding the acquisition of dragon eggs?” at the same time as Eliot says, _Are you forgetting that time we all robbed a bank?_

“That was different -” Quentin starts.

“You guys robbed a bank?” Penny says blankly.

They look at him, and Julia - hesitates. It’s not like Penny doesn’t know about Reynard, the whole fucked-up story (except apparently this detail), so there’s no reason not to explain, it’s just - she’s fucking pissed at him right now, and she doesn’t want to see his eyes go soft and sympathetic -

Margo glances at her, and then says to Penny, “We needed the money. And we needed the egg, so - fuck it, what’s done is done.” 

_I mean, we would have gone ahead with it anyway if you’d told us the egg belonged to Irene_ , Eliot says. _I would have helped you steal it if you’d asked._

Quentin transfers his glare from Julia to Eliot, who only shrugs and says, _What? Still worth it_ ; and Quentin looks away.

Penny says, “But you _didn’t_ tell us - you didn’t tell me. You didn’t even trust me that much -”

“How can I trust you when you keep - I don’t even know, acting out this weird Kevin Costner-in- _The Bodyguard_ -fantasy, like you need to sweep me off my feet and out of danger?” Julia says, staring him down, clenching her fists tight, her nails biting into her palms. “Margo was right - I had the shield spell up, and you yanked me out and nearly got everyone else killed -”

Penny takes a step backwards, his arms uncrossing and dropping to his sides. “Julia, Jesus Christ, I wasn’t - you hurt your leg last night, I wanted to make sure you got out okay -”

“My leg? What about _Eliot’s_ leg - if it was a triage decision, shouldn’t you have gotten him out first?” Julia says. “I’m not indestructible anymore, but I’m still a fucking magician - I’m not your damsel-in-distress, I’m not -” that other Julia, she nearly says, but cuts herself off in time. “You need to stop. I’m telling you to stop.”

Penny stares at her, swallowing hard, says, “Julia, I - I’m -” 

The front door opens, and they all spin towards it as one of Kady’s hedges steps inside - Della, her name’s Della - and blinks at them in surprise. “Oh. Hey Julia, hey Penny, and uh - everyone. Am I interrupting something?”

Penny turns around and walks away down the hall towards the bedrooms without another word. A few seconds later there’s the sound of a door slamming shut.

Julia closes her eyes, bites the inside of her cheek hard; then makes herself look at Della and smile reassuringly. “Della. Hi. You’re not interrupting, but you should probably go, sorry. There are some people after us, and they could track us here -”

“People after you?” Della says. She comes inside, closing the door behind her and resetting the wards, and then turns back towards them and lowers her voice. “Is it the Library?”

“No,” Julia says slowly. “Why would it be the Library?”

“They’ve been roughing up hedges - something’s gone missing, there’s something they’re looking for,” Della says. “And a hedge got fragged in the Lair. Kady and Pete went and checked it out last night, but now Kady’s gone off somewhere and Pete’s saying fuck-all. The hedge section of Twitter is going nuts, everyone’s ready to run for the hills again.”

“Shit,” Julia says. “Kady wanted to talk to Alice about something -”

“Text her,” Margo says. “Text both of them, we need to know what the fuck is going on.”

“Do you think it’s got something to do with -” Quentin says.

“Maybe, I don’t know,” Julia says, rubbing at the sore spot on her arm. “But why would the Library give a shit?” She turns to Della. “Look, it’s not the Library that’s after us, it’s strictly a magician-on-magician business dispute.”

“Okay, if you say so,” Della says. “But - if someone’s tracking you, I could help with that. I got a lot of experience with tracking spells last year, after that fucking mess with the Deweys.”

“It could be dangerous, you should just go -” Julia says.

Della shrugs, tosses her braids back over her shoulder. “You’re Kady’s friends, and I owe her. Let me take a look.”

“I - okay. Okay, thank you,” Julia says. She glances down the hallway where Penny’s vanished - then turns back around, setting her shoulders. “Let’s do this.”

*

It had only taken a few minutes before Della had said, “Oh yeah, that’s a tracking spell - a good one, too,” while staring at Julia’s arm through a fiery sigil she had drawn in the air - but actually removing the spell is taking a lot longer, and involves a salt circle in the den and several rounds of chanting, so Quentin wanders over to the kitchen to get a glass of water.

He hadn’t noticed it so much in the rest of the loft, but it hits him hard in the kitchen - everything that’s different. Because he’s spent the last couple of months living in this loft, he’s been in this kitchen a thousand times, he was in it - what still feels like yesterday, but now there’s a small herb garden on the counter next to a mostly-dead cactus, a crack in the glass stovetop, unfamiliar turquoise mugs in the sink. There’s a new whiteboard calendar stuck to the fridge, along with a scattering of takeout menus and a mix of grocery lists and spellwork scribbled in pencil onto bright orange post-it notes, and a stack of library books piled on the marble countertop. 

The calendar says April - and he had known, but he hadn’t - until now, he hadn’t really - life had gone on, in this kitchen. Life had just kept going on, through Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s, through fucking Groundhog Day, Valentine’s Day, the batshit craziness that was New York City on St. Patrick’s Day - everyone had just kept waking up in the morning and making coffee in this kitchen, through the rest of the fall, through the whole winter - and he had missed it, he’d -

He yanks open the cupboard door - the glasses and cups are in the same place, at least - and takes out a glass, turns towards the sink - 

And Eliot is standing right there, next to the kitchen island, and Quentin jumps so hard that he slams his hip into the counter, feels the water glass drop out of his nerveless fingers. 

Eliot’s hand shoots out like he’s trying to catch the glass, an automatic and completely useless reaction since he’s five feet away - and the glass freezes in its fall, hangs obediently in mid-air just above the ground.

They stare at each other. “Sorry,” Quentin says, “shit, _shit_ , sorry - I was just -” 

The glass falls the last couple of inches to the ground with a _clink_. 

Eliot shakes his head, says silently, No, no, it’s okay - and then something else that Quentin doesn’t catch - then Eliot’s backing up fast, moving with grim determination despite the slight awkwardness of the cane.

“Wait. Wait, Eliot -” Quentin says, but Eliot’s already turning and heading across the loft towards the balcony, and he doesn’t stop or look back.

Quentin watches him disappear through the balcony doors. The adrenaline is still pounding through his system - breathing too fast, bitter taste in his mouth, and when he bends down to pick up the glass his hand is shaking. He puts the glass down, then grips the counter with both hands, leaning over until his forehead is nearly touching the cold marble. 

He stays like that, trying to breathe as steadily as he can, until he’s sure that his hands have stopped shaking, until he’s sure he’s not going to do something stupid like start crying in the middle of Kady’s kitchen, or maybe find an empty bedroom, crawl under the bed, and just stay there for the next week, god- _fucking_ -damnit -

Eventually he straightens up, pours himself the fucking glass of water, drinks it. He thinks of (the broken mirror) the magical charge build-up, and takes a second to cast a spell to fix the crack in the stovetop; then he goes out to the balcony to find Eliot. 

Eliot’s leaning on the railing, staring out at the city - not that there’s much to see, it’s all gray mist and and gray sky and gray buildings, and for a moment Quentin misses Fillory so much that it physically hurts. He rubs at his breastbone as he walks around the patio set, over to Eliot at the railing. 

Eliot’s cane is propped against one of the planters, he’s using the railing as a support instead, but he starts to move as soon as he turns his head and sees Quentin coming - but Quentin moves faster, shoulders in next to him at the railing and catches his elbow. “Don’t, Eliot, for fuck’s sake, just - stay here. We’re not doing this, okay?” 

Eliot’s holding himself very still, isn’t trying to pull away; he lifts his shoulders in a little ‘don’t know what you’re talking about’ shrug, but he won’t look at Quentin.

Quentin tightens his grip on Eliot’s arm, says fiercely, “I’m not afraid of you.”

Eliot shoots him a quick sideways look that speaks volumes about how full of shit he thinks Quentin is, but Quentin keeps going, “I’m _not_ , asshole - maybe you didn’t notice, but we slept in the same goddamn bed last night -”

Eliot says something silently - it’s hard to read lips when Quentin can only see his profile, but he thinks it was: I noticed.

“ - and I’m sorry about what happened, but for me it was literally yesterday that you were - that you were still fucking possessed, so sue me if I’m -”

Eliot finally turns to look at him, bracing himself against the railing with one arm as he casts the pool of light spell and says, _Jesus, why the hell are_ you _apologizing?_

“ - a little fucking wound up,” Quentin finishes. “But I’m not afraid of you, okay? It’s just my brain fucking backfiring on me, which honestly, what else is new? But you can’t - I don’t want you to start running away from me, or thinking that you have to -” He takes a deep breath. “It’s over, I know it’s over, so - I just need some time, that’s all.”

 _You can have time, you can have anything you -_ Eliot says. _I thought that you - might need some space, too._

“If I need space, I’ll go hide in a bedroom like Penny,” Quentin says, and is rewarded with the smallest upward curve of Eliot’s mouth. Then it occurs to him - Quentin lets go of Eliot’s arm, says, “Um. Unless you need space?”

 _No_ , Eliot says, _no, I had over five months worth of space, so - I’m good for forever, basically._

“Okay, well, me too,” Quentin says. “I thought you were dead,” and it tightens his throat to say it, even now, “I thought - we weren’t going to get you back, but we fucking did, and you’re here and I’m here and if you start _avoiding_ me, now, after all that, it’s going to -” 

It’s going to fucking break me, he doesn’t say, because Eliot is saying, _Okay, okay, okay -_ and staring at him like -

“Okay,” Quentin says. “Good, then.” He blinks, glancing away, and after a moment Eliot moves back into his previous position, leaning on the railing and facing the city, the side of his arm just barely brushing against Quentin.

Eliot looks pale and brittle and like he hasn’t gotten enough sleep in a long time - Quentin can relate - but Quentin likes looking at him all the same - it’s good to see Eliot being Eliot, being Eliot-and-not-the-Monster, wearing one of his suits, his hair neat; to see the animation in his expressions and the warmth in his eyes.

He’s maybe - staring kind of creepily, so Quentin makes himself look away, mimics Eliot’s stance against the railing; a gust of wind sweeps across the balcony, and he shivers and shuffles closer, pressing their arms together. It’s cold out here, and neither of them are wearing coats, so -

He feels Eliot relax into the touch, and lets himself lean in, just a little. 

Eliot’s hands are sticking out over the railing, still cupped together for the pool of light spell. Quentin says, “Julia told me what happened to your voice.”

Eliot sighs, then twists his hands so that it’s easier for Quentin to read the words floating up from them. _Of course she did._

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Quentin blurts out - it’s been a stone sitting in his stomach since Julia told him, and it’s only gotten heavier with the news that Julia’s managed to piss off both magical gangsters and Irene McAllistair in her mission to drag his ass back to the land of the living.

Eliot looks at him sharply. _Of course I should have._

“It’s not that I - I’m grateful, believe me,” Quentin says. “But fuck, Eliot - your voice, and Julia stole that egg, and you had no guarantee that the spell was even going to work -”

 _I don’t know how many times I have to say it - it was worth it_ , Eliot says. _Yeah, we took a gamble, we rolled the dice - and we came up lucky fucking sevens because you’re standing here next to me. And besides, I’ll probably get it back._

“’Probably’,” Quentin says. “You don’t know for sure. You took a crazy risk -”

 _Nothing’s for sure_ , Eliot says, scowling. He pulls away from Quentin, turning to stare at him full-on. _Are you really giving me shit about this after what you said last night about making your own choices - after what_ you _did at Blackspire, in the Mirror World -_

“Okay, first of all, I’m not stopping you from doing anything, I’m telling you that you’re a fucking idiot for -” Quentin says, but Eliot doesn’t let up.

_All in all, I think I got off pretty fucking light, aside from Bambi’s Little Mermaid jokes - that witch could have asked for a hand, or an eye, or - or my firstborn child - wait, too late for that -_

Quentin flinches, and Eliot stops, swallowing. Then he says, _Or she could have asked that I spend the rest of my life in a prison with a monster._

“That’s not the same, that’s not even close to being the same,” Quentin says. He steps back, crosses his arms. “What I did - it was to bring back magic, to keep Everett from getting god-level powers - _important_ things -”

 _It was for you_ , Eliot says, like it’s that simple, that obvious, and Quentin stares at him.

Eliot looks down at the ground, biting at his lip, shifting his feet; then raises his eyes back up to meet Quentin’s. He says, _Q -_

The balcony doors fly open; Margo sticks her head out. “Get your asses in here. They found us.”

*

Margo can see them through the glass panes in the door - she counts six, but there could be more waiting further back down the corridor. Kady’s alarms had gone off as soon as these fucking douchebags had gotten off the elevators, but they haven’t started to try and break through the main wards yet.

Eliot comes over to stand next to her, Quentin following behind him. 

“Six, maybe more,” Margo says. She’s already got her axes ready. 

Julia yells down the hall, “Penny! We’ve got company!” and then turns to Della and says, “Hey, do you know about the one-way portal in the bedroom closet upstairs?”

Della nods, but says, “Maybe I should stay -”

“This isn’t your fight, and Kady will shove me out the nearest window if I get you killed - go, go now -” Julia says, and Della takes off towards the stairs.

“Oh, and spread the word, tell everyone to stay away from Kady’s!” Julia calls after her.

“You’re sure Kady’s wards can stop bullets?” Margo says, watching the silhouettes move behind the glass. 

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Julia says. “Kady doesn’t fuck around. It’ll take them a while to break through, we need a plan -”

“Did you get rid of the tracking spell?” Quentin says. 

“Della said I was clear, but - they know who I am, who we are, they’ll find us again -”

“Not if we go to Fillory,” Quentin says. “We disappear for a while, go help Margo and Eliot take down Sauron or whoever the fuck -”

“No, scratch that - this is a good place to make a stand,” Margo says. “We have some time while they get through the wards, we can put our fucking heads together and come up with something to solve this little problem permanently.” 

“We’re not killing anyone, if that’s what you mean,” Julia says, turning to stare at her. 

Penny appears at the hallway entrance and says, “Who exactly are we not killing?” and then sees the shadows at the door. “Ah, fuck.”

“They _shot_ at us,” Margo says. “We’re not playing by Marquess de Queensberry rules. If they’ve got Irene McAllistair on their backs until they bring us in, they’re not going to throw up their hands and call it quits just because we drop off the map for a while, so what exactly do you think the endgame is here?”

Eliot tucks his cane under his arm and casts the subtitles spell, says, _I vote we examine our options before we jump straight to ‘they send one of yours to the hospital, we send one of theirs to the morgue’ - or all of them to the morgue, whatever._

“Christ, Margo - we have Penny, Julia’s tracker-free, and we can literally go on the lam on another planet,” Quentin says. “Maybe let’s try Plans A through Y first and save ‘kill ‘em all’ for Plan Z?”

Margo rolls her eyes. “Sure, I’ll save it for Plan Z - or the second they start fucking shooting at us again.” She’s _done_ losing people, and she’s not inclined to show mercy to assholes who are trying to kill her family.

Julia grimaces, turns back towards the door. The silhouettes are moving again, and one of them looks - Margo frowns, stepping closer. What the fuck - 

“We incapacitate them for now, and then we figure out what to do next. Penny, you had an idea -” Julia says.

On the other side of the door, a woman calls out, “Honey, we’re home! Come on, sweetie, tell your friends to let us in.”

There’s the sound of a scuffle, a pained groan - and then Kady’s voice, hoarse and trembling, “Julia, don’t - whatever they say, don’t -”

“Kady!” Julia starts forward, Penny racing to catch up with her - but Margo beats them both to the door, skids to a stop in front of Julia.

“That’s not Kady,” Margo says. “It’s a trick, it’s -”

“You don’t know that for sure -” Julia says, and tries to dodge around her.

“I _know_ , I can see it with my fucking fairy eye, the shape is all wrong - they’ve got a fucking snake-monster out there, a -”

“A lamia,” Julia breathes. “Shit.”

“They’re first-class psychics,” Penny says. “I’ll try to run interference for us, but I’ve never gone up against one before -”

Through the door, the woman says, “Well, fuck, guess we’re not doing this the easy way - so we’ll go with the only slightly less easy way.”

Something lights up on the other side of the glass: a thin line of blazing white light, in the shape of a rod around three feet long. The lamia’s standing directly in front of the door now, holding whatever it is in her hands (claws?) - one hand wrapped around the middle, and the other clutching the top - and then she twists the bar of light sharply clockwise ninety degrees -

(like - Margo thinks - like loosening a bolt with an Allen key on a fucking Ikea bookcase)

\- and then Kady’s alarms start shrieking again as the wards come crashing down, the backwash of magic a buzzing jangle on Margo’s skin, and the front doors smash to the ground, knocked clean off their hinges - 

Margo brings her axes together and launches a blast of pure power at the doorway - there’s no fucking time for any incapacitation bullshit - but the lamia’s coming through the doorway with the bar of light held out in front of her, and the ice turns to water in mid-air, splattering across the floor - 

\- one of the dickwads hiding behind the lamia tosses something small and round into the room; as soon as it hits the ground, it - 

\- fucking _explodes_ , and Margo reels backwards, instinctively turning her face away from the blast of light and sound -

\- fuck, fuck, her ears are ringing, she can’t fucking hear a thing, like being trapped underwater - she forces her eyes open, and her left eye’s blinded, nothing but darkness, but her right eye, her fucking fairy eye is coming through for her again, because that eye can see just fine -

\- she’s not bleeding, as far as she can tell, and neither is anyone else, but they’re staggering, faces contorted - Eliot’s half-bent over, off-balance, Penny’s mouth is open like he’s yelling, Quentin’s stretched his hand out blindly and caught hold of Eliot’s arm - Margo can’t see anything like shrapnel damage in the room either, so - flashbang, magical flashbang because the fairy eye’s not affected (should have used the real thing, you stupid motherfuckers) -

The stupid motherfuckers in question are barreling into the room, but Julia throws up a shield spell, her hands flying and her mouth twisting into a snarl even as her eyes stare blankly - four of them start casting a paralysis spell again but the fifth pulls a gun, and Margo throws her axe at him -

\- it nails him in the shoulder and he stumbles backwards into the wall, lets go of the gun - but then the lamia is right in front of her, fangs bared, lidless yellow eyes wide, and clawed hands raising the bar of light -

And then a voice says from the doorway, “ _You dare_ ,” and everything stops.

The girl standing in the doorway is blonde and round-faced, but the voice growling out of her sounds a demon from the deepest pits of hell, and Margo’s hearing it in her head, not with her ears.

The lamia turns to look at her, but the other shitheads attacking them have gone stock-still, frozen in place. Margo blinks - and can see out of both eyes, and then her hearing kicks back in too, in time to hear the girl in the doorway say, “You dare to invade a dwelling that is under the protection of the Baba Yaga?”

Margo glances over at Eliot, and he’s looking back at her, blinking a little dazedly, but he gives her a nod.

“Oh, hey,” the lamia says. “Is this _your_ place? Can we talk about this?”

“No,” the girl in the doorway says. 

Then - there’s not even time to scream, it’s like that fucking scene from _Raiders_ when the Ark gets opened except on super fast-forward - she’s spattered with a spray of hot liquid -

And instead of five magician-gangster fucksticks in the room, now there’s five pools of blood and other bits that used to make up a person, puddled on the floor. 

Margo reaches up with one hand, slowly wipes the blood off of her face.

The others are all equally gore-splattered, and staring in shock; Eliot’s gone dead white and Margo starts to sidle sideways towards him, one small step at a time, not taking her eyes off of the lamia and the Baba Yaga.

The Baba Yaga’s staring at the lamia now, but the lamia smiles, fangs gleaming, and waves the bar of light in front of her - Margo’s got a better look at it now, it’s a short ivory staff, some kind of design twining around it -

“Don’t even fucking try it, hag,” the lamia says. “You think you’re hot shit, but you see this? You know what it means?”

The Baba Yaga tilts her head to the side, examining the staff.

“It means the boys are back in town,” the lamia says, grinning. “And all you ghosties and ghoulies or what-the-fuck-ever can just crawl back to the gutters and holes that you came from. It means my faith has been rewarded, it means - ” she laughs, a weird hiss-huff noise, “ - it means everything old is new again.”

“Lady, you need to update your references,” Margo hears Penny mumble.

“Get out,” the Baba Yaga says.

“My master sent me after these thieves,” the lamia says. “And your magic can’t fucking touch me, so -”

An impossibly long, sharp knife slides out of the Baba Yaga’s sleeve and into her hand. “No, but I can skewer you like fish-bait and throw you off the balcony,” the Baba Yaga says.

“Or I’ll just show myself out,” the lamia says, and slithers rapidly towards the door, turning back to wiggle her claws at Julia and Penny in a coquettish wave before disappearing around the corner into the hallway.

“Why - why the fuck did you do that?” Julia says, faintly. She’s holding her blood-splattered arms out away from her body, staring at the Baba Yaga. “And - why is it so warm?”

“I boiled them where they stood,” the Baba Yaga says. “They came to your home, attacked you and yours, no? This property is under my protection - you pay rent, I solve your little problem. Why complain? You have much bigger problems now.”

“What are you talking about?” Margo says.

“I am ageless and unending and have forgotten more spells than you will ever know, and even I am not so fucking arrogant as to meddle in the affairs of the gods,” the Baba Yaga says.

There’s a strange noise, like waves splashing somewhere off in the distance, or the patter of rain, and the back of Margo’s neck starts to prickle as she shivers, going all over goosebumps. She edges closer to Eliot, reaching out for him - the room smells like ozone, why does -

“Stupid little magicians,” the Baba Yaga says, shaking her head. “What have you _done_?”

And then the world splits apart.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is a Latin phrase usually translated as 'the die is cast'. It was supposedly said by Julius Caesar at the crossing of the Rubicon.
> 
> Quentin is referencing the Wall that the Night's Watch patrols from _Game of Thrones_.
> 
> "The rumors of your death have been greatly exaggerated" is paraphrase of the apocryphal quote by Mark Twain.
> 
> Through the looking glass and Humpty-Dumpty are references from _Alice Through the Looking Glass_ by Lewis Carroll.
> 
> "oh the shark has pretty teeth, dear" is the first line of the song Mack the Knife by Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht, in the Louis Armstrong version.
> 
> Welcome to Thunderdome is from _Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome_.
> 
> Sauron is the villain from _The Lord of the Rings_.
> 
> "They send one of yours to the hospital, we send one of theirs to the morgue" is a line from _The Untouchables_.
> 
> The 'scene from Raiders' refers to _Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark_. If you've seen it, you know the scene I'm talking about.
> 
> The Boys are Back in Town is a song by Thin Lizzy.
> 
> 'Ghosties and ghoulies' is part of a line from a traditional Scottish prayer.
> 
> Everything Old is New Again is the name of two very different songs, one by Peter Allen and one by Barenaked Ladies.


	9. Fractures

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She stops, nailing Julia with an iron stare, a High King stare. “This is fucked up, you know that, right? This is fucked up, and it is actively fucking us up, because Quentin is dead and gone and the longer we spend trying to bring him back and failing, the harder it gets to actually deal with it.”
> 
> Julia takes a breath. Counts - _1, 2, 3_ ; lets it out. “I’m not giving up yet.”

“Do you think we should cancel the Forum meeting?” Alice asks. 

They’re hurrying across campus, leaving the infirmary behind to head for the Brakebills travel-point. The rain’s still pelting down, so Kady sticks close to Alice so that she can stay dry under the shield spell; Alice’s hand keeps brushing against hers as they walk, and Kady is - trying not to notice.

“No, definitely not,” Kady says. “We keep everything business as usual, explain what’s going on -”

“Once we figure out what the hell _is_ going on,” Alice says grimly. “And somehow leave out the part where we’re implicated in the dragon egg theft -” 

“The hedges are already paranoid as fuck when it comes to the Library, with good reason - we have to present a united front, make sure everyone knows that the truce is still on before anyone starts getting ideas about guerrilla resistance,” Kady says. 

Alice sighs, says, “Yeah, okay, I - shit. Just as a heads-up, I think my mom’s going to be at the meeting, too.” She hesitates, then adds, “And since magicians are actually the worst fucking gossips, she probably knows about us.”

“Oh,” Kady says. Alice doesn’t talk much about her mom, but Kady knows that their relationship is rough at the best of times. “You think she’s gonna say something shitty, make a scene?”

“I _know_ she’ll say something shitty, that’s not even a question,” Alice says, staring down the ground. “Although probably not the kind of thing you’re thinking - if it’s anything like last time, she’ll congratulate me on expanding my sexual horizons, and aren’t I so lucky to have her as a shining fucking example -”

“A shining _fucking_ example,” Kady says under her breath, just to make Alice crack a smile, then asks, “Last time?”

Alice doesn’t answer right away, and Kady says, “You know what? None of my business,” but Alice shakes her head.

“No, it’s only - it’s embarrassing. After Charlie - died, I used to steal vodka from the liquor cabinet, then go to parties and get practically black-out drunk and fuck people in empty bedrooms - or sometimes start sobbing on them instead, whichever happened first. It was pathetic, and fucked-up -”

“Hey, you’re talking to the queen of fucked-up coping strategies, remember,” Kady says, and lets her fingers tangle with Alice’s for a second, accidentally-on-purpose. 

“I think part of me just wanted my parents to _notice_ -” Alice says, then her face hardens and she says, clipped, “But they didn’t. The one time my mom caught me with Meg, her friend Debbie’s daughter, it was at our house during one of their stupid parties, and - we were in the garden, we were so drunk we could barely stand up, and all my mom said was that she was glad that I was finally loosening up, and how she’d had the most transcendent Sapphic experience at the Temple of Artemis in the eighties - because it is always, always about her -”

Alice stops, swallowing, then looks sideways at Kady. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t - I know your mom’s -”

“Dead,” Kady says. “Yeah. But if she were alive, I would totally be talking shit about her, so don’t worry about it.” 

Alice still looks unsure, her eyes dropping back down to the ground. Kady doesn’t know exactly how much of the story Alice’s heard - Alice is well-aware of her beef with Marina, but Kady’s never gotten into the gritty details, and Alice has never asked (she thinks that Alice would understand though - if Kady told her, sometime).

Kady says, “My mom was - she was my mom and she loved me, and I loved her - and she was terrible. And all of those things are true at the same time, you know?”

Alice looks at her. “Yeah, I do know,” she says, and touches Kady’s hand, her fingertips sliding across Kady’s palm. 

Kady pulls her hand away - they’ve gotten to the travel-point, so she reaches for the Library Travel-card in her pocket, says, “Anyway, you can tell your mom that it’s nothing serious, so you don’t need any congratulations or ritual orgy anecdotes -”

“What?” Alice says, her face freezing, but Kady’s already tracing out the spell on the Travel-card -

She’s Traveling, and then she’s in the Library, with its book-shelves looming around her and its heavy old-paper-and-waxed-floors smell; there’s no one around, the chair behind the reference desk is empty - and then Alice appears next to her, clutching her own Travel-card in her hand.

“It’s super quiet in here, even for the Library,” Kady says, stepping away to get a closer look at the desk - there’s a cup of tea on it, only half-empty. “Shouldn’t someone be manning the desk?”

“It’s nothing serious?” Alice says. She’s standing very still, watching Kady move around the vestibule.

Kady shrugs, turns away to look up and down the aisles; she tries to keep her voice casual, and ignores the knot that’s slowly tightening in her stomach. “I mean - we’ve only been messing around for a couple of months -”

“Is that what we’ve been doing?” 

“ - and now Quentin’s back, so -”

“So what?” Alice says. “So what if he’s back, he’s been gone for months, it’s not like we’re just going to fall back together like nothing’s changed -”

“He’s been _dead_ for months, that’s not exactly the same thing -”

“It was his decision, either way,” Alice bites out.

Kady turns to face her, shoving her hands in the pockets of her jacket and wondering how much of a dick move it would be use the Travel-card to bounce back to New York and out of this conversation. “You’re pissed at him right now, sure, but once you get the chance to fight it out, or bang it out, whatever, you’re gonna feel differently -”

“Don’t tell me what I fucking feel,” Alice says. 

“I’m not, I’m -” Kady looks away - she shouldn’t have started this, should have kept her goddamn mouth shut; they’re both exhausted and on edge and they don’t have time - “It was good, okay? It was fun, and we both needed the distraction, but now - we aren’t fucking _dating_ , you don’t have to stick around out of -” 

“I don’t understand why you’re -” Alice says, her voice rising up high and uneven. “So you’re saying if Penny came back you would just drop me like hot garbage?”

And Kady doesn’t - that’s not - she shakes her head, opens her mouth to answer, but she doesn’t know how to - 

“Oh,” Alice says. “You would.” 

“I don’t - Penny’s not coming back,” Kady says. “It’s not like with Q, he doesn’t want to come back, he doesn’t want -” She meets Alice’s eyes, blinks away the hot prickliness lurking at the corners of her own. “So it doesn’t fucking matter, does it?” 

Alice is staring at her like Kady’s started speaking in tongues. “Who gives a fuck what Penny wants? I’m asking what _you_ want -”

“Alice! Alice, you’re here!”

They both turn - Zelda’s standing at the far end of the one of the aisles, wringing her hands and looking frazzled and - damp? - and miles away from her usual prim composure. 

“You need to come with me - both of you, right now,” Zelda says. “There’s something you need to see.”

Through a maze of hallways, up a spiral staircase, then another, and another, all the way up to the surface, to a metal door - no, more like a hatch, set into the wall with a wheel that Zelda turns, hand over hand, to release the seal. 

Zelda throws open the door, and they’re hit with a gust of cold wet wind. They step outside, onto a raised stone platform - and into the storm.

They’re ten feet off the ground, at the top of a hill, the Neitherlands and its innumerable plazas and fountains stretching out below them, and the sky above them is a churning tumble of dark clouds with flashes of sheet lightning off in the distance; rain is bucketing down, spilling down onto the spiraling walls and pathways, splashing into the fountains. 

And the water is starting to rise. 

The fountains are overflowing, small waves sliding over the edges and trickling onto the ground - but there’s already water on the ground, flowing along the pathways from plaza to plaza - less than an inch deep (for now), spreading further and further. 

“Well, shit,” Kady says. 

The wind howls around them, snatching her words away and tossing rain into her face, soaking her hair and clothes. She shivers, cold down to her bones; then - 

She looks down - Alice is holding her hand. Eyes front, shoulders stiff, glowering out at the onslaught of rain through spelled waterproof glasses, but - her fingers are warm, and curled around Kady’s.

Kady doesn’t pull away this time. 

There are a dozen Librarians standing out on the platform as well - three of them are fiddling with some sort of intricate contraption, but the others seem to be just watching the storm. Zelda taps two of them on the shoulders, and Kady recognizes them as they turn - Phyllis and Gavin, both higher-ups in what’s left of the Library’s hierarchy - and gestures for them all to follow her back inside.

Once they’re inside with the door closed and sealed again, Phyllis lifts her hands in a quick spell, and suddenly Kady’s dry again - they all are; even the puddles of water on the floor have disappeared.

“Hey -” Kady says, ready to go off, but Alice beats her to it; she lets go of Kady’s hand and whips around to glare at Phyllis, hissing, “Don’t you ever fucking do magic on us again without asking.”

Phyllis jerks her head back. “I was only drying everyone off -”

“I get that, but it’s very rude,” Kady informs her condescendingly; she’s always willing to lean into ‘good cop’ when Alice is running full tilt towards ‘scary cop who used to be a powerful amoral being of pure magic and don’t you forget it’. “Try it in a hedge bar and you’ll either get punched or hexed - or punched _and_ hexed -”

Phyllis gives her a pinched smile. “I’ll keep that in mind if I’m ever in a - hedge bar.” She says ‘hedge bar’ the same way Kady might say ‘toxic waste dump’.

“On the other hand, if you could manage that drying spell on a worldwide scale we’d be shitting rainbows, given our current fucking predicament,” Gavin says.

“So what the hell’s going on?” Kady says. “I thought the Neitherlands didn’t get weather, never mind the-fences-are-down, the-dinosaurs-are-loose-in-the-park-level storms.” 

“It doesn’t - at least it’s not supposed to,” Alice says. “It’s old, old magic that the first Librarians set up to protect the fountains, but - ” She frowns, looking at Zelda. “Do you think this is the part of same issue that we’re having with the books? The old spells trying to adjust to the new level of ambient -”

“Perhaps,” Zelda says. Her arms are crossed, her fingers tapping a rapid rhythm against the side of her arm as she stares at Alice. “Interestingly enough, the rain started shortly after the somewhat unusual occurrence of the Underworld branch sending a book back up to us for re-shelving. Would you care to take a guess at whose book it was?”

Alice doesn’t say anything, and Kady struggles to keep her face impassive.

“Quentin fucking Coldwater’s,” Gavin says. “Go on then, show us your best fake ‘surprised’ face.” 

Alice looks at him appraisingly, tilting her head. “You - don’t actually know what happened, do you? You didn’t read his book?”

“We don’t do that kind of thing anymore, haven’t you heard?” Gavin says. “According to orders from the top - that’d be you - we’re all about respecting privacy now -”

“No, bullshit,” Alice says, then turns towards Zelda. “There’s a storm outside that’s supposed to be impossible, magically speaking - it’s an emergency situation by any definition, you could absolutely justify the breach of privacy, so why didn’t you read his book?”

“Because we couldn’t,” Zelda says, her fingers tapping faster. “The issue we were having with uncontrolled revision? It seems to have accelerated.”

“Alice said that the books were revising themselves, changing on the shelves without having to be sent to the revision room,” Kady says. “Like the spell’s evolved, given them minds of their own -”

“They don’t have minds of their own, that’s absurd,” Phyllis snaps, then says to Alice, “How wonderful that you’ve been telling the hedges all about our problems - you’re so very _open_ with your information sharing, aren’t you?” 

“Accelerated how, exactly?” Alice says, ignoring Phyllis.

“The words keep changing - shifting around so quickly on the page that they’re impossible to read, as though they’re in a state of constant flux,” Zelda says.

“So there’s something about Quentin’s book that -” Kady starts, but Zelda cuts her off. 

“No, you don’t understand, it’s not only Quentin’s book,” Zelda says sharply. “It’s all of them.”

“All of them?” Alice says, her eyes going wide.

“Every single book that tells the story of a life, they’ve all become effectively unreadable.” Zelda sounds like she’s trying not to burst into tears, and Kady’s not unsympathetic but -

“So it’s like The Great Blank Spot all over again - you don’t know what happened with Quentin, and you don’t know what’s _going_ to happen. It must just kill you guys to be stumbling around in the dark like the rest of us, huh?” Kady says, and shrugs off the nasty looks from Phyllis and Gavin and the reproachful one from Zelda. “Knowledge is power, bitches - and Alice has some motherfucking knowledge that you don’t, so maybe you all should get off her back until we work out how to fix the books -”

“Fuck the books,” Gavin says, and Zelda twitches like she’s only barely stopped herself from taking a swing at him. “If the fountains flood, everything will be completely, irreversibly fucked to hell anyway -”

“We don’t know that for sure -” Zelda says.

“Explain,” Alice says, her voice steely. “Right the fuck now.”

“We’ve had reports of - spillage,” Phyllis says. “The fountains function as permanent portals to different worlds - and when their water overflows and joins the floodwater, it seems to be creating temporary portals where the concentrations of magic are the strongest - cracks in the fabric of reality where the worlds can leak into each other.” She chews nervously on her thumbnail. “And some of those worlds are real fucking doozies - like the one that’s all volcanoes, or the one with the Frog, or the one with the humanoid kangaroos -”

“Okay, we get it - there’s a world without shrimp and a world with nothing but shrimp,” Kady says. “But - million dollar question here: what happens if the water rises high enough to flood all of the fountains at once?”

“Maybe nothing,” Zelda says. “The portals might all be rendered inert.”

“Or?” Alice says.

“Or it might be like tossing a hundred thousand worlds in a fucking blender and hitting ‘frappé’,” Gavin says.

Kady swallows hard, looking at Alice. “So - that’s a case of competing hypotheses that we definitely don’t want to actually test.”

“Right,” Alice says. “So our first priority is to keep the fountains from flooding. Probably a stupid question, but have you tried sealing them over, like the Poison Room fountain?”

“We tried that already,” Phyllis says glumly. “And nearly got fried by some suspiciously well-aimed lightning strikes.”

“Really?” Alice says, her eyebrows flying up. “But doesn’t that mean -”

A spot on Kady’s wrist is suddenly burning, a small hot flare of pain, and she looks down at the two beads attached to her watch strap - the yellow one is glowing. “Fuck balls, someone just busted through the outer wards.”

Alice spins to face her. “At your place?”

“Yeah, I have to go - shit, I’m sorry, but I have to - Della could be there, or Pete -” Kady says, and she has to go _now_ , time moves differently in the Neitherlands, in another minute it might be too late -

Alice looks torn, says, “Maybe I should come with you -”

“No way, you’ve got a fucking crisis here, you need to stay - I’ll be fine, I swear,” Kady says, reaching for her Travel-card.

“Okay, okay, I -” Alice says, and then steps in close, knocking Kady back into the wall and kissing her, fast and hard.

She pulls back quickly, and Kady blinks at her, stunned, her mouth still open, sparks shooting down her spine.

“Don’t die,” Alice says.

Kady nods, fumbles with the Travel-card. “I’ll see you later,” she says, and it’s a promise, not a goodbye.

Kady Travels - then she’s standing in the doorway of an empty storefront in Manhattan, and she takes off down the sidewalk at as close as she can get to a dead run, heading for the loft. The sidewalks are slick with rain and full of pedestrians, but she makes good time all the same - she’s got Sam Cunningham’s old badge in her jacket (for emergencies,‘cause a genuine police badge is its own kind of magic) and she holds it up, bellows, “NYPD, out of my way,” as she runs.

She’s hitting the button for the elevator in the lobby when her wrist starts burning again - the red bead is glowing: the main wards are down. “ _Fuck_ , no, come on -” She flings herself into the elevator, bouncing on her toes and stretching out her hands the whole way up, reaching for that still quiet place in her head that lets battle magic come rushing out, powerful and controlled -

The elevator doors open, and Kady bolts into the hall - just in time to see a woman stepping into the other elevator. 

The woman in the elevator turns to face the doors - she’s wearing a long green dress with a matching green umbrella tucked under her arm, and when she sees Kady, she smiles and gives her a slow wink as the elevator doors slide closed. 

“Hey! Hey, who -” Kady lifts her hands to blast the doors, but then two things hit her at the same time: one, she can hear someone talking in a strange growling voice from the doorway of the loft, and two -

\- and two, the thick, stomach-churning smell of blood is drifting down the hallway.

She runs down the hall, trying to shove back the panic that’s rising up in her chest - there’s a blonde girl in the doorway, her back to Kady, and she’s _familiar_ , somehow, even the creepy voice is familiar - Kady can see Julia and Penny 23 in the loft beyond her, Margo and Eliot and Quentin too, there’s blood and what looks like pieces of bone and viscera all over the floor, oh what the fucking fuck -

The blonde girl is saying, “What have you _done_?” and Kady does know that voice, it’s her fucking landlady, the Baba Yaga, or Bailey - or the Baba-Yaga-in-Bailey, Kady doesn’t really understand what their deal is, and just now she couldn’t give a single shit -

She skids to a halt in front of the doorway, yells, “What the fuck is going on?” 

The Baba Yaga turns to look at her, and inside the loft reality breaks apart.

It’s not like any portal Kady’s ever seen, usually neat holes carved into the air with another world waiting peaceably on the other side; this is more like another world has crashed itself like a train into the middle of Kady’s living room - like the half the loft, half the world has been sheered away and _somewhere else_ slotted into its place, the hardwood floors giving way to a narrow, rocky path at the edge of a cliff-face, hundreds of feet in the air, with a vast greenish sky stretching out to a mountainous horizon in the distance. There are creatures circling in the sky above, too far away for Kady to identify, but she can hear their agitated screeching from the doorway. 

Julia’s standing right at the edge of the boundary, and so also right at the edge of the fucking cliff, and she’s twisting around, like she’s looking for - she screams, “Penny!” and Kady - no, fuck no, she can’t see Penny 23 or Margo, they were standing on the other side of the split - 

Kady’s already moving into the room, moving towards Julia, only half-noticing that the Baba Yaga’s gone from the doorway, fucked off to who-knows-where - when Julia’s foot slides in the pool of blood (one of the pools of blood) and she stumbles sideways, out of the loft and onto the cliff-side of a strange world.

Kady follows her across.

She steps through with her hand outstretched, reaching for Julia’s arm - there’s no sensation in the crossing over, but the air turns hot, acrid, the cries of the creatures flying overhead now piercingly loud, and the reddish rock under Kady’s boots is uneven and crumbling. 

There’s another scream from above - this one sounds much, much closer, and Kady glances up to see one of the creatures starting to swoop down towards them - and _fuck this_ -

“Julia, come on, move -”

She grabs hold of Julia, who seems frozen, staring at the edge of the path where the ground drops away to nothingness less than a foot away from where they’re standing (and Julia hates heights, won’t go out on the balcony at the loft, had always refused to go anywhere near the edge whenever they went up to the roof of her building to smoke -); Kady hauls her bodily backwards, their feet slipping on the rocks as they teeter, off-balance, the shrill wail of the thing that’s fucking dive-bombing them getting louder and louder - 

Someone’s arms suddenly come around her from behind, she and Julia are being yanked backwards - and then the desert heat’s gone, there’s a floor under her feet instead of rocks, and the three of them - Kady, Julia, and Eliot, because it’s Eliot who’s behind her, are staggering across the loft and crashing to the ground in a graceless heap.

“Jesus, Jesus Christ, are you - is everyone -” Quentin says, jerky, garbled, stepping towards them.

The portal ripples, once, like the surface of a pond, there’s a soft whooshing noise (waves breaking against the shore) - and the portal is gone, the loft is whole, and Margo and Penny 23 are standing there staring at them, their faces frantic with worry. 

For a long moment, no one moves, harsh breathing the only sound in the room. 

“What the fuck,” Kady finally says. It comes out a lot more trembly and freaked-out than she’d like. 

“Julia,” Penny 23 says, stepping forward and then stopping abruptly. “Tell me you’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” Julia says, muffled against Kady’s collarbone. “Are you?”

“Yeah,” Penny 23 says, but his hand is drifting towards his temple in a familiar gesture (like his head is aching, like someone’s cranked the volume on the radio station way up and he can’t turn it down - that’s how Penny used to describe it).

Julia rolls away from her, slowly sitting up, and Kady pushes herself up onto her elbows and looks over at Eliot, who’s still lying flat on his back; he’s got one hand up covering his face, but she can see that his mouth is a twisted line of pain. “Hey, are _you_ okay?”

“What the everloving shit just happened?” Margo says, falling to her knees next to them. She drops her axe on the floor, puts a careful hand on Eliot’s shoulder. “We couldn’t see you, half the loft disappeared - all we could see was a giant fucking portal that looked like a one-way trip to Dagobah -” 

Eliot holds up his other hand, index finger raised in a ‘one second’ gesture - but his hand is red and dripping, and Kady recoils, shocked. Then she looks down, realizes - they’ve landed in one of the pools of blood on the floor, it’s all over their hands and arms and backs - now that’s she’s looking, it’s fucking everywhere, everyone’s face is speckled with it -

“Whose fucking blood is this?” Kady asks. “What the _fuck_ happened in here?” and yeah, definitely more freaked-out than she wants to sound, ever, but it’s a legitimate fucking question, okay? 

“It was because of me,” Quentin says, very quietly.

“It wasn’t because of you,” Julia says, but she’s staring down at the blood on her hands and clothes and swallowing like she’s trying not to be sick. 

The smell of blood is everywhere, it’s awful, it’s - (John Gaines’ life, slipping away; the carnage at Julia’s apartment when Reynard -) and Kady shoves herself to her feet, has to get away from it. Eliot’s seen the blood now, and is using the spiral staircase as a support to wrench himself up off the floor, a similar desperation in his eyes, ignoring Margo’s attempts to help -

\- and then Kady freezes in place, because the houseplants are sprouting huge leaves and vines that have started to crawl their way up the walls, and the orange that someone had left on the coffee table is halfway to being a sapling.

“Fuck,” Kady whispers, then louder: “Julia, you’re bleeding magic,” - but it’s not just Julia, because Penny 23’s face is creasing in pain, his shoulders hunching up, his hands pressed against his head; the windows are rattling in their frames, the stupid tchotchkes shaking their way off of the mantle and clattering to the floor; there’s a clang behind her and she turns around in time to see the broken front doors fly up off the ground and back into place, wards slamming down around the whole room; the cracks in the doors’ smashed glass panes are disappearing as they knit back together, then all the lightbulbs in the room shatter - 

\- and the blood is - it’s like she’s breathing it in, like it’s in her mouth, choking her, and she just wants - to run away, she wants -

“Everyone do the fire spell, right now,” Margo yells, in a voice that’s pure drill sergeant - no, Kady corrects herself, pure High King of a whole goddamn country. Margo’s got one hand wrapped around Eliot’s arm, but she sticks her other hand out in front of her and casts the spell, a fireball blazing into life above her palm. “All of you, do it! Right fucking now!” 

Kady heaves in a shaky breath, moves her fingers through the spell; she can see the others doing the same - it’s an easy spell, basic, she could do it in her sleep. She stares down at the small fire burning above her hand, one of six identical flames now flickering in the room. 

The wards around the room dissipate, the windows are still, the vines have stopped growing. The room smells mostly like burning and ozony-magic, not blood, and Kady breathes, doesn’t look at anybody else.

“Fuck a _duck_ ,” Margo mutters. “Okay. Let’s just -”

Quentin says, “I know a good spell for getting blood off.”

There’s a pause, then Margo says, “Sure, go for it,” and Kady nods along with everyone else. She feels a warm hum of magic, and the blood disappears from her hands, from her jacket and shirt, and the relief nearly bowls her over - she ducks her head, trying to hide her face, busies herself with extinguishing the fireball in her hand.

“Thank you,” Margo says, without the slightest hint of mockery. “Now we just have to get all this shit off the floor -”

“I know a spell for that too,” Quentin says, tonelessly. “We - before, we stole some plastic sheets from Home Depot, there’s probably still a few in the storage room - first we’ll wrap up what’s left of the bodies and Penny can go drop them in the ocean somewhere. We don’t even have to worry about them floating this time.”

Kady raises her head and stares at him; Margo and Eliot are giving Quentin equally disturbed looks.

Quentin sees them looking - he snaps, “What?” then stomps off down the hall towards the storage room.

Eliot turns his head, watches him go - Eliot’s hands are clean, but he’s still wiping them convulsively against his pants, and Margo’s watching Eliot watching Quentin with anxious eyes.

“El, come with me,” Margo says. “I think the scratches I got last night are bleeding again, there’s a first aid kit under the sink but I need your help.” Eliot blinks, then looks down at her and nods; Margo shoves his cane into his hand and wraps her arm around his waist as they move slowly towards the bathroom. She shoots Kady a questioning glance over her shoulder, and Kady gives her an ‘I got this’ look, tries to project the certainty of someone who has their shit entirely together.

“I’m gonna -” Julia stands up and takes off in the direction of the kitchen. After a few seconds Kady can hear her retching into the sink. 

Penny 23 starts to follow her, then stops in his tracks, clenching and unclenching his hands at his sides; his face is still a bad color, his eyes wide and shocky.

“For fuck’s sake, go check on her,” Kady says - or croaks, her voice has gone hoarse as shit, and she coughs, clears her throat.

“She’s pissed at me -”

“Is whatever you did bad enough that you can’t hand her a paper towel and a glass of water? No? Then fucking go,” Kady says.

He starts moving, heading towards Julia in the kitchen, and Kady stands alone in the living room. She still doesn’t know where the blood came from.

“What the fuck,” she says again, under her breath.

“It’s because of me, it’s my fault,” Quentin says. He’s standing at the edge of the living room, a bulky pile of plastic sheets cradled in his arms. “The spell to bring me back -”

“If this is because of the spell that brought you back, it’s actually everyone’s fucking fault _but_ yours, isn’t it?” Kady says acerbically. “So you can lay off the fucking pity party -” 

She cuts herself off as she turns to face him, because Quentin’s staring at the blood on the floor, and he doesn’t look like he’s feeling sorry for himself - he looks like he’s caught in a nightmare. 

“Hey, Q,” Kady says, but he doesn’t look at her, so she hardens her voice, says, “Hey, I need you to do something for me,” and this time he turns his head towards her. “Go to the kitchen and make coffee for everyone - put lots of sugar in it, and get the whisky from the bar cart for anyone who wants that too, okay?” She’s sure as fuck going to have some.

“Yeah, sure,” Quentin says, and drops the plastic sheets on the couch as he walks by. 

Kady looks around at the mess, then closes her eyes for just a second. She’s so fucking tired - she wants a shower, and to sleep for twenty-four hours straight. She wants to be so high that she can forget that any of this is happening. 

She wants - she wants Alice to be here, standing next to her, holding her hand. 

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The-fences-are-down, the-dinosaurs-are-loose-in-the-park-level storms” is a reference to _Jurassic Park _.__
> 
> _  
> _The world with humanoid kangaroos is a vague reference to _Tank Girl_ , and the world without shrimp / nothing but shrimp in a running joke from _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_._  
>  _
> 
> _  
> _Dagobah is the planet where Yoda lives in _Star Wars_._  
>  _


	10. Ch-Ch-Changes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She stops, nailing Julia with an iron stare, a High King stare. “This is fucked up, you know that, right? This is fucked up, and it is actively fucking us up, because Quentin is dead and gone and the longer we spend trying to bring him back and failing, the harder it gets to actually deal with it.”
> 
> Julia takes a breath. Counts - _1, 2, 3_ ; lets it out. “I’m not giving up yet.”

Alice is speed-walking through the stacks towards the main reference desk when Sheila comes up alongside her (the thing about Sheila is that it’s not that she knows where everyone is, it’s just that she always finds exactly what she’s looking for). “So I asked around about the egg,” Sheila says quietly.

“Walk with me, I can’t stop, I’m late,” Alice says. She’d gotten caught up in the intricacies of the Neitherlands’ ancient weather magic and had lost track of time - falling into a research spiral in the Library is like deep-sea diving into the Mariana Trench. “What do you have for me?”

“Bupkis,” Sheila says. “No one knows anything, or at least no one will admit to knowing anything.”

“Zelda said the same thing - she has no idea why Librarians would be questioning hedges about the theft,” Alice says.

“Thing is, they’re full of shit,” Sheila says. “Maybe not Zelda, but the rest of them - they’re trying to hide it, but they’re scared.”

“The books have turned unreadable and the Neitherlands are flooding, it’s not like they don’t have good reason -”

“Oh, they’re freaking out about that, too,” Sheila says. “But no, this is a different kind of scared, this is guilty-scared, ‘I fucked-up and I don’t wanna get caught’ scared. I know the difference.”

“Okay,” Alice says slowly. “So they do know something about the dragon egg, and they’re lying about it. Why?”

Sheila shrugs. “They also know we’re friends. They don’t trust you, so they don’t trust me.”

“Wow, tell me what you really think,” Alice says. She tightens her grip on the pile of books in her arms, glares down at them - if her suspicions are correct, they’re probably useless anyway; they can screw around with the weather spells all they want, it’s going to accomplish fuck-all if whatever’s causing the storm is something that’s being done _deliberately_ -

“I’m not going to bullshit you,” Sheila says. “As a general rule, the Librarians hate change, and there has been a shitload of change around here lately, and a significant chunk of it is because of you.”

“Yeah, I’m not going to apologize for helping dismantle their little experiment in totalitarianism, not to mention their ridiculously labyrinthine bureaucracy -” Alice says, but Sheila keeps going.

“They’re not bad changes, it’s just - look, when magic got turned off, it fucked this place up, okay? Some of the people here had been rolling along in the same routines for decades - their whole world got up-ended, and they’ve been scrambling for control ever since. They’re running scared, Alice. And that was before monsters broke in and starting murdering them -”

“I don’t need to listen to you make excuses for them,” Alice says. 

Sheila shakes her head, puts her hand lightly on Alice’s arm, stopping her. They stand in the stacks, the Library’s eerie quietness seeping in around them now that they’ve stopped moving.

“I’m not making excuses,” Sheila says. “I’m _warning_ you. When people are frightened, when they feel out of control, they make stupid, shitty decisions. The Librarians don’t trust you - they think that you’re not on their side -”

“It isn’t about sides -”

Sheila shoots her a disbelieving look. “Give me a break, you’re not that naive. You didn’t even join the Order, and everyone knows you’re sleeping with a hedge witch -”

“Oh, fuck off,” Alice says, and spins away from her, striding forward. “The Library forcibly seized control of magic, they put lethal trackers on the Deweys, they infected the hedges with bloodworms - but they want to act like they’re the victims here?”

“Maybe you should ask someone who had friends at the Modesto branch -”

“They fucking started it,” Alice says.

“Huh, yeah, no idea how they got the impression that you’re not on their side,” Sheila says. “Plus there’s a rumor that this latest clusterfuck is happening because you brought your ex-boyfriend back from the dead?” 

“We don’t know why it’s happening!”

“Wait, so did you actually -”

Alice walks faster. “I don’t give a shit if they like me, if they trust me -”

“You should,” Sheila says. “For fuck’s sake, Alice, you’re in charge of us! You’re our leader, you need to fucking lead us!”

Alice’s feet stutter to a stop. “I don’t know how.” It’s out of her mouth before she can think better of it. “This isn’t - this is so much harder than I -” Alice stops, biting her lip. “I’m working on a Grand Unified Theory of Magic, you know? That’s what I wanted to do. That’s what I wanted from the Library - books, and research, and - working _alone_ -” 

Sheila’s staring at her with her arms crossed, and Alice sighs. “I’m not - good. With people.”

“You don’t say,” Sheila says.

“When I took this job - I made so many mistakes, and this seemed like a way I could fix some of them. But it’s all - politics, and bickering over a thousand pointless sub-sub-regulations, and people - _needing_ things from me, all the time - it feels like -” like the Library’s swallowing her whole, like she’s tumbling head-over-heels down its bottomless rabbit-hole, “- like I’m trapped here again, except this time I did it to myself.” 

Kady’s so much better at that kind of thing, at working out what people need and giving it to them; Alice has been leaning on her hard, and maybe - (something in her chest is twisting, aching) - maybe that’s part of the reason why Kady’s pulling away now, maybe she’s tired of it, tired of dealing with Alice’s messes, tired of _Alice_ , full stop; maybe Quentin coming back is just the excuse - 

“The Library isn’t a prison,” Sheila says, her expression softening a little. “I would know.”

Alice gives her a twitch of a smile. “Well, they locked me up in a cell, so we’re gonna have to agree to disagree on that one.”

Sheila looks away. “Yeah, okay, fair.” 

They start walking again; they’re nearly at the main reference desk when Sheila says, “You know, you’re not actually trapped here this time. You chose this, you chose us - and I’m not saying the Library hasn’t made its own share of mistakes, really fucking big ones - but we deserve more than just being your penance.”

Alice looks at her, speechless - then Zelda is smiling and calling to them from the desk; she’s waiting there with Gavin, who’s wearing his customary expression of bored disdain. 

“Ah, Alice, Sheila - I’m glad you made it, Harriet should be arriving any second now.”

“Harriet’s still coming today?” Sheila says, her voice low. 

“We’re keeping everything business as usual,” Alice says on auto-pilot, trying to shove her churning brain back to the present moment. “We thought the hedges might be upset if we cancelled the meeting. Why, do you think it’s going to be a problem?”

“Nah, everyone likes Harriet,” Sheila says. 

“Even though she’s not on their side?” Alice says sourly.

“I mean, now that they know she’s Zelda’s daughter - the old guard all remember her from when she was a kid, and she knows the ins-and-outs of the Library, how things work around here - they like that,” Sheila says.

“Right,” Alice says. “Right, yeah. Actually, do you think -”

She cuts herself off as Harriet appears in the middle of the room, along with two other hedges who Alice recognizes from Forum meetings.

And for a second, Alice thinks she sees a disturbance in the air next to Harriet, a waver, like heat shimmering over the highway on a searingly hot mid-summer’s day - and she blinks, looks closer, but it’s gone.

“Did you see -” she starts to ask Sheila, when the waver appears again, moving rapidly across the room towards the stacks -

\- and then it resolves abruptly into a person.

Marina Andrieski, standing in the middle of the Library, holding an unfamiliar clockwork device in her outstretched hand, and wearing an expression of shocked dismay as she catches sight of the round of surprised stares aimed her way.

“Oh, I’m gonna kill that baby-faced little shit,” Marina says - but she’s already moving as she says it, throwing the clockwork device at Zelda and Gavin with a hard over-arm pitch and flinging her other hand out in front of her, tossing a small black stone to the ground. The stone is smooth and criss-crossed with carvings, and Alice can’t read them all from this distance, but she doesn’t have to - because she’s pretty sure that she _knows_ that spell, she’d taught it to herself in first year after Brakebills South -

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck - Alice opens her arms, lets her books fall, heedless. 

Next to her, Alice hears Sheila start to whisper a spell, Zelda and Gavin duck away as the device hurtles into them and then clatters to the floor, Harriet lifts her hands as she stares at Marina with wide, startled eyes, the black stone hits the floor with an incongruously loud _click_ \- and Alice does two things very fast.

She claps her hands in front of her (hands that are already stretching, fingers lengthening grotesquely, tips of feathers sprouting out like sharp white bristles), says a specific word in a certain esoteric dead language (she just gets it out before her mouth flexes and hardens into a different shape, her teeth and tongue shifting into their new configurations), and puts the Library into lockdown - no one and nothing in or out, fucking DEFCON 1; Alice doesn’t know how Marina got in, but she’s sure as shit not getting out.

She can feel herself shrinking, can hear her bones crunching as they warp, turn hollow - and it hurts, dully, but she doesn’t fucking have time for that, for worrying about pain, because the second thing she does is move what’s left of her fingers through the fastest goddamn spell she can think of to shred every piece of clothing that she’s wearing to ribbons. They’d been naked during the last part of the Trials because of the need for vulnerability and emotional honesty and all that crap (and probably because the Brakebills faculty is notoriously depraved), but they’d also been naked because no one wants to be wearing clothes when they’re turning into a fucking goose - Alice catches sight of Sheila next to her, also mid-transformation, sees the dark markings on her head and beak - not a goose, a _swan_ \- 

Good, Alice thinks, even as she stands transfigured, feathered, wingèd, webbed feet scrabbling on the slippery tiles, surrounded by the remains of her own destroyed clothes and shoes, darting her head around on her weirdly long neck, looking for Marina: swans are bigger. Bigger and meaner. 

There’s a brilliant flash of light, an explosion of noise, loud cracking and popping sounds echoing off the Library’s smooth floor and walls, and Alice spreads her wings wide, shriek-honks in alarm - she can hear similar screams from the other swans, several of them writhing around on the ground, tangled in their clothes - 

\- but then she spots Marina standing at the edge of the room, fireworks shooting into the air from her outstretched hands, before she turns around and disappears into the stacks, leaving avian chaos in her wake.

And swan-Alice is frightened, confused, starting to panic - _too loud too bright trapped inside can’t fly away can’t escape_ \- but human-Alice snatches control for one more second, fixes her eye on Marina’s vanishing form, and compresses all that terror into a diamond-hard kernel of rage instead, gives her jumbled swan instincts a purpose and a target. 

Marina. 

Intruder! Thief! _She_ did this - she’s on _your_ territory, here to steal _your_ things - she broke into your nest (Library), she hurt your mate (Kady) - 

Chase her, catch her, and _fuck her shit up_.

Alice launches herself into the air, wings beating frantically, and flies after Marina, thirty pounds of feathery, malevolent nemesis careening through the air above the stacks. 

She follows Marina down five floors and through a dozen interconnected rooms before she’s certain of Marina’s destination: the Poison Room, quelle fucking surprise.

Marina’s already inside by the time Alice gets there - she hears the door slam shut when she’s still a few rows away, so she resists her swan-brain’s pointless urge to throw her entire body at the closed door; instead she lands on top of the closest bookshelf and stares down at it, snapping her beak angrily, waiting. 

There’s a empty bottle on the ground in front of the door; Alice figures the odds are pretty fucking good that it used to contain poison-eating insects. So: someone told Marina the exact location of the Poison Room, told her about the counter-agent to keep from getting killed by the eponymous poison - when Alice finds out who that someone is, they’re going to have a very, very bad day.

Marina’s been in the room for two minutes, three minutes, five minutes - maybe Alice should get off the bookshelf, work on turning herself back into a human; she’d taught herself how to break an involuntary transformation spell at the same time she had learned how to cast one, that was just common fucking sense, but without fingers or a voice it’ll take more time and concentration than she probably has right now -

The door to the Poison Room opens, and Marina steps out.

She takes a quick look around the room, then glances back down at the Travel-card in her hand. “Come on, come on, you piece of shit, _work_ -” 

In her other hand she’s holding a slim leather-bound book, and that’s what Alice aims for when she drops down onto Marina’s head like the wrath of fucking god (which god, exactly?), wings flailing, clawed feet jabbing, trumpeting and hissing and biting any part that moves. 

“Oh what the fuckity fuck -” Marina yelps, staggering back into the wall, throwing up her arms to cover her face, and Alice jerks her head forward and snatches the book out of her hand, then kick-jumps off of Marina’s chest back into the air - and she’s off, flying into the stacks, honking around the book in her mouth in vicious triumph.

From behind her, she hears Marina shouting, “I’m going to fucking kill you, do you hear me? I’m going to fucking flash-fry you in mid-air, bitch!”

Alice takes a hard right, flies up a long twisting staircase and then out again into another large room before Marina reaches the bottom of the stairs; she flaps harder to get above the stacks, there’s not a ton of clearance between the tops of the shelves and the ceiling but it’s still faster than dodging in and out of - wait.

She can hear footsteps, someone running through the aisle near the far end of the room - who the fuck - 

Maybe the transformation spell didn’t reach this far, maybe she can get some back-up in the form of someone with actual fucking hands - and she veers towards the sound, but then has to dive down back to stack-level to dodge the missile of green light that Marina’s sent hurtling towards her, fucking _hell_ \- 

She arrows her way between the bookshelves, flies out into the next aisle - and comes face-to-face (beak-to-face) with Josh fucking Hoberman. 

“Aagh, shit!” Josh says, freezing mid-stride and ducking to avoid a collision.

Alice flies over him, then lands on the ground behind him, opening her beak to let the book fall to the floor and honking loudly. 

Josh turns around and raises his hands like she’s holding a gun on him; he’s got shaggy hair and a week’s worth of beard growth, and his vaguely cowboyesque clothes are grimy and damp. “Like I told the other guy, I come in peace - I’m not here to steal anything or hurt anyone, and I’ve got nothing to do with the involuntary _Swan Lake_ performance art piece, alright? All I want is access to the Earth fountain -”

Alice glares at him and hisses meaningfully, and Josh frowns, staring at her. “Do we know each other? ‘Cause your terrifyingly piercing gaze _is_ kind of familiar.”

He moves his hands in front of his face, looks at her through the rectangle of his fingers, and his jaws drops. “Whoa - Alice, hey! Long time no see -”

Another missile comes whistling towards them - Josh yells and throws himself behind the nearest bookshelf, Alice grabs the book up off the floor and flaps rapidly after him.

“Alice, what the fuck is going on?”

Alice honks around the book and takes off through the stacks towards the corridor at the end of the room, which is about the most useful answer that she can give him at the moment, and Josh chases after her. They race into the next room, down another long aisle, and then Josh says, “Here, over here!” and darts into a row of bookshelves. He shoves an abandoned book-cart across the entrance of the row and waves at Alice.

“Come here, quick, I’ll turn you back, and then at least there’ll be two of us going up against whoever the fuck that is - and battle magic’s not really my thing, but _you_ -”

Alice lands on the floor next to him and drops the book. Josh kneels in front of her, then pulls a small knife out of his boot and reaches towards her; she gives him a sharp warning hiss and he flinches back. 

“Hey, hey, we’re buds, right? This is for the spell, I’m gonna turn you back, so please don’t peck my eyes out or bite my fingers off, okay?” Josh says.

Alice makes a soft humming noise of assent, and Josh blows out a breath and says, “Okay, cool, we’re totally cool,” and leans forward slowly, using the knife to draw a triangle on the ground around her and whispering in French.

After a few seconds, she feels the spell working - she opens her beak and screams, can’t help it, as her bones and skin stretch into new shapes, her feathers falling out and raining onto the ground - Josh tries to shush her, patting worriedly at a wing that is suddenly now a hand, and then it’s done, and she’s sitting on the floor of the Library in a pile of feathers, human again. And also naked. 

“Oh, sweet holy Moses,” Josh says, clamping a hand over his eyes. He shrugs out of his long coat and shoves it at her with the other hand. “I didn’t see anything, I swear on my finest ganja -” 

Alice grabs the coat and yanks it on with shaking hands, resists the swan-urge to bite him. “Josh, don’t cover your fucking eyes, I don’t give a shit what you see - keep a look-out for -” 

The book-cart slams into them. 

It hits Alice’s head and shoulder with shocking force, hard enough to leave her blinking away stars as she lies sprawled on the ground, Josh groaning next to her, his eyelids fluttering, and the heavy weight of the book-cart on top of them, pinning them down.

“Where’s the fucking book?” Marina’s standing at the entrance to the row, blood trickling down her face from the scratches left by Alice’s beak and claws. 

Alice opens her mouth but Marina’s faster, her hands tumbling through the air, and Alice feels a bar of pressure slam into her neck, choking her before she can speak. 

“On second thought, just consider that a rhetorical question,” Marina says. 

Alice’s hands are trapped under her body along with the damn book, and she struggles to work them free as Marina steps closer, her own hands raised high, a cloudy black mist slowly coalescing above her palms. 

“No hard feelings, baby girl,” Marina says. “But I really fucking need that book, so -”

Behind Marina, a figure in a long coat steps into the row of shelves and jabs Marina hard in the back. Marina freezes, her body shaking, her mouth locked in a grimace, and then drops to the floor like a sack of potatoes. 

Alice gasps as the bar of pressure disappears from her throat, and squints up at the woman who’s staring down at Marina’s prone body, holding what looks like a steampunk taser in her hand. 

“Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker,” Fen says.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of the chapter is from David Bowie's song "Changes".
> 
> 'tumbling down the rabbit-hole' is a reference to Lewis Carroll's _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_.
> 
> "Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker," is, of course, from the movie _Die Hard_. Quentin gets this line in _The Magician King_ but I'm giving it to Fen.


	11. For Worse Or For Better

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She stops, nailing Julia with an iron stare, a High King stare. “This is fucked up, you know that, right? This is fucked up, and it is actively fucking us up, because Quentin is dead and gone and the longer we spend trying to bring him back and failing, the harder it gets to actually deal with it.”
> 
> Julia takes a breath. Counts - _1, 2, 3_ ; lets it out. “I’m not giving up yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mention of suicide in this chapter - please see the end notes for a full description.
> 
> Also please note that I probably won't be watching season five of The Magicians as it airs, and so won't be incorporating any of the new canon from that season into this story (such as the identity of the Dark King when it's revealed, for example); I'll just be continuing with the story as I have it outlined, so consider this a total AU after season four.

He makes it all the way to the front door of the Cottage, and then he stops.

“Eliot?” Margo says, just behind him.

Eliot shakes his head, moves sideways across the step, away from the door - at least he can get out of everyone else’s fucking way - then leans against the wall of the Cottage, tucking his cane under his arm so he can cast the subtitles spell. 

_I can’t_ , he says. _I’m sorry, I just can’t._ He’s been holding it together, keeping his head above water, but if he steps into the Cottage right now -

Margo looks at him, then starts nodding. “Okay, okay, that’s fine, so - we’ll go to the library instead, or to the dorm -” She turns to the open doorway of the Cottage, calls out, “Julia, Penny - new plan, get back out here -”

“Let me get the bunny first,” Julia calls back.

Kady sighs and crosses her arms, but she doesn’t look angry so much as tense and exhausted - the dark circles under her eyes rival Eliot’s own.

“What’s wrong?” Quentin says. He sounds tired, and not very interested in the answer.

Eliot shakes his head again, stares down at his cupped hands. They’re not trembling, so that’s good. 

// He’s in the bathroom with Margo at Kady’s place, and blood is trickling sluggishly from the half-healed cuts on Margo’s arms. Margo’s perched on the edge of the tub, Eliot’s sitting on the toilet seat, Margo’s right arm in his lap. He’s trying to tape a fresh piece of gauze over the cuts, but his fingers keep fumbling the tape.

“Hey, we can just sit for a bit, take a break,” Margo says, her voice soft. She reaches up with her free hand, tucks a straying piece of hair back behind his ear.

Eliot stares at the tape, at his stupid shaking fingers. He wants to say, we can take a break after I stop your fucking arms from bleeding, but he’d have to use his hands to cast or get his phone out to do it - so instead he stares down at Margo’s arm and carefully presses the piece of tape into place, and then the next one, and the next one. When he’s done, he lifts his hands away and Margo puts her left arm into his lap without a word.

He starts taping the second piece of gauze. 

“Do you remember that time in Buenos Aires?” Margo says. “With the fountain?”

Eliot keeps his gaze on the tape but gives her a nod, raising his eyebrows slightly. The fountain in Buenos Aires had been extremely fucking memorable, yes.

“I was so high,” Margo says. “I was a beautiful tropical fish, swimming in the Pacific. And I was so fucking pissed when you picked me up out of the water, I kept trying to kick you in the balls the whole time you were carrying me to the taxi.” 

You also kept repeating the address from _Finding Nemo_ and accusing me of being a pelican, Eliot can’t say, so instead he lets his mouth turn up at the corner the way it wants to, despite everything, and puts the next piece of tape in place.

“And I called you a damn dirty pelican,” Margo says. “I was soaking wet and screeching, and I kept trying to kick you, but you didn’t let me go.”

Eliot shrugs. The trip to Buenos Aires had been a couple of weeks after the Trials and Brakebills South, in their first year - he’d only known Margo a few months and she’d already understood him better than anyone he’d ever met, already known more about him than anyone in the world outside of Indiana - no, _including_ Indiana. 

“You should have dropped me on my ass,” Margo says.

Eliot finishes with the last piece of tape, then lifts Margo’s arm so that he can press a barely-there kiss to the smooth skin just below her wrist. 

Margo sighs, then pulls her arm back, tugging her sleeves up over the gauze. “Thanks.”

Eliot’s hands are - well, mostly steady now. He casts the subtitles spell, says, _Anytime._

Margo stands up, looks down at him with her hands on her hips. “So. Same shit, different day.”

He laughs silently, because oh, sure - just a few more corpses, a few more capricious gods, a few more worlds cracking apart - toss it all onto the heap of the wreckage Eliot’s left behind him, who’d even notice?

“Hey,” Margo says, sharply this time. “Yeah, we’re in it, fucking hip-deep in it - same slightly crazier shit, different day. But we’re in it together, okay?” She reaches her hand out towards him, palm up, waiting impatiently - like she doesn’t doubt for a second that he’ll take it, or that he deserves it.

(Eliot had spent almost two weeks sharing a dorm room with Margo after he’d been cut loose from the infirmary, until the night that he’d woken her up yelling bloody murder (someone else’s blood, his murder). It had been - the thing is, his mosaic timeline memories are usually faded, fuzzy, more like a movie he’s watched than a life he’s lived; when he’d tried to access them in the Happy Place they’d appeared drastically different from his other memories - echoey and sepia-toned, not quite real, or at least not quite his - 

Except for when something triggers one into bursting into his brain in full HD and surround sound. And except for in his dreams.

Eliot had dreamed himself into his bedroom at the mosaic - _their_ bedroom - and it had felt real, it had felt right, the worn quilt under his hands, the tiny patch of sunlight that made it through both the trees and their window pane a warm square on the side of his face, the familiar shape in the bed next to him - 

Eliot had smiled, had rolled over to - and it _was_ Quentin in the bed next to him, Quentin’s body anyway - chest ripped open, blood drenching the bed-sheets, sightless eyes staring up at the ceiling -

He had screamed, had kept screaming as he shoved himself back, back across the bed, blood on his hands, blood all over him (and he knew why, he _knew_ ) - until he’d pushed himself off his actual bed, in the actual world, and hit the ground hard enough to scream in pain instead. 

And Margo had stumbled out of her own bed - “Eliot, El, what the fuck, are you okay?” - had knelt on the floor next to him, holding him until he’d stopped shuddering, until he’d managed to haul himself back up to his feet with her help, once they were sure he hadn’t ripped any stitches. Eliot had stood there in their dark empty dorm room, his face wet, his heart still pounding, and stared down at his bed like it was the enemy.

“I made Todd download a shit-ton of episodes of Mystery Science Theatre for me last week,” Margo had said. She’d had bags under her eyes, a pillow crease on her cheek, her hair a tangled mess. “Let’s watch them all.”

Eliot had breathed out, shakily. “I love you.”

“I know,” Margo had said, and extended her hand to him with an imperious flick of her fingers.)

Back in the here and now, in Kady’s sleek minimalist bathroom, Eliot says, _I would say we’re_ neck _-deep in the shit, but yeah, we’re in it together_ , and Margo smiles like a sunrise.

“Just keep swimming, bitch.”

Eliot looks at Margo’s hand, then reaches out with his own (spotlessly clean) hand to take it, and lets her guide him to his feet. //

“Eliot can’t do the Cottage right now,” Margo says. 

“What? Why?” Quentin says. 

“Or what about the tent spell, should we give it a shot?” Margo asks, ignoring Quentin’s question, and touching Eliot’s arm lightly when he doesn’t answer.

 _Sure_ , Eliot says. _Why not?_ There are limited stakes (ha) in fucking up a tent spell. 

“It was his memory palace,” Penny says to Quentin. “Or memory prison, I guess, when the Monster had him.”

“Oh,” Quentin says.

Eliot closes his eyes, wishes - what? What does he even wish? Quentin’s standing on the steps of the Cottage with him, a couple of feet away (shoulders hunched, hands shoved in the pockets of his coat, his eyes distant, shadowed - but alive and right _there_ ), so how fucking greedy can Eliot be, to imagine that he deserves more wishes?

// Their empty coffee cups litter the countertops in Kady’s kitchen. Eliot hadn’t put any whisky in his coffee, but he’s starting to think that that had been a mistake.

“Are you sure you didn’t leave anything out?” Kady asks.

 _I’m sure_ , Eliot says. He’s leaning hard against the kitchen island, trying to hide exactly how much it’s costing him to stay standing; it’s too soon to take more painkillers but he’s thinking about it anyway. _I asked for Q back, we fought over the value of a life and accused each of other of being responsible for the monsters, he told me about his wife -_

He glances at Julia, standing with her arms crossed and her eyes downcast. He hadn’t mentioned that part last night, in the infirmary - Eliot had hoped he could take Julia aside at some point, break the news about Persephone quietly and privately. It hadn’t gone down like that.

 _He said a song for a life_ , Eliot says. _He said there were no guarantees. He didn’t say anything about The Perfect Storm hitting the Neitherlands or the books getting fucked up - although -_

He stops, because there had been -

“What?” Kady says.

 _He said that I didn’t understand what I was asking for_ , Eliot says.

“Which is a statement so cryptic as to be basically useless,” Margo says. “That’s not even a fucking warning -”

Kady shakes her head, her face tight, but all she says, “Okay, let’s go to the Library, fill Alice in - maybe she’s figured out what’s going on -”

“I don’t think we should go to the Library right now,” Julia says.

Kady looks at her. “Why not?”

“Because of me,” Quentin says. He’s standing a little apart, his face turned towards the windows; he’s still holding his empty coffee cup, flipping it around in his hands. “Right? Because the Library thinks this is happening because of me, because I came back. So maybe if I was gone -”

 _Q, what the fuck_ , Eliot says, breathless, gut-punched, but no one’s looking at him - Margo’s throwing her hands out wide, saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, fuck that noise -” while Julia whips her head up and nails Quentin with a hard stare, says, “Don’t you fucking -” 

Quentin doesn’t stop, just talks louder over both of them. “ - if I was gone, if I was _dead_ \- again,” his voice falters for only a second, “it might fix everything. That’s what you’re worried about, right, so why not just say it? Because if I’m thinking it, and you’re thinking it, then the Library is definitely fucking thinking it.”

“It might fix everything, sure,” Penny says flatly. “Or it might fix precisely fuck all, because we have no idea what’s actually going on.”

Julia steps towards Quentin, radiating intensity. “Yeah, I’m worried about the Library - I’m worried that they’re going to jump to conclusions and do something crazy -”

“It’s not exactly a fucking jump,” Quentin says, and flips the cup faster. “Come on, Jules, you really think this is - what? Just a series of wacky coincidences?”

“Alice isn’t going to let the Library -” Kady starts, but Margo snorts.

“Alice isn’t going to be able to stop it if some rando Librarian decides to take initiative by taking a pot-shot at Q,” Margo says. “And that’s assuming that they don’t just fucking mutiny - Julia’s right, we can’t risk it.”

Julia hasn’t taken her eyes off Quentin. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence, no. But I also think _post hoc, ergo propter hoc_ is a fallacy, and we have exactly zero fucking evidence that you being back is the cause of the storms in the Neitherlands or the book spells going haywire -”

“The Baba Yaga said -”

“Yeah, Kady’s trigger-happy, Linda-Blair-lite landlady said some vague shit about messing with the gods,” Margo says. “What the fuck does she know?”

Quentin’s shaking his head, still staring out at the windows, and Eliot knocks his joined hands hard against the pile of books on the counter.

Quentin looks at him, and Eliot says, _This isn’t your fault._

The cup goes still in Quentin’s hands. He swallows, then says, “It’s not that I - it’s not like I _want_ it to be -”

“Great, so knock off the martyr talk,” Penny says. “’Cause that track’s pretty played out by now, and the remix is shit.”

“Look, Gareth’s gang showed up with a lamia,” Julia says. “A maybe not-so-former servant of the gods, with a weapon that took down the wards like they were nothing. Who sent her - Irene? But then who the fuck powered her up? There is something else going on here -”

“Julia -” Quentin says.

“I’m saying that we have a fuckload of questions, and we can’t make any decisions about what to do until we get some answers, okay?” Julia says, her voice going a little ragged.

“Okay,” Quentin says. “I - okay,” but he looks away again, towards the windows (towards the balcony?), and Eliot lets out a long breath, wishes again for that whisky. //

Margo says, “We need - what? A knife, a blanket? Anything else?”

 _It’d be easier with a shovel_ , Eliot says. Trying to cast the tent spell _sans_ shovel in a wet, muddy field at Glastonbury had been the uncontested lowlight of the trip.

“Yeah, right, I remember,” Margo says, and heads inside the Cottage. “Sit tight, I’ll be right back.”

“But - you were fine at breakfast this morning,” Quentin says. “In the Cottage, I mean.”

 _I wasn’t fine_ , Eliot says. _I was - trying to be less fucked-up, this morning, but that was then and this is now and it turns out that my level of fucked-up-ness is actually only getting higher today -_ He makes himself shut up, wills Margo to reappear so that they can get to work casting the stupid fucking tent spell before the dark skies open up and it starts fucking raining again.

Quentin is silent for a long moment, then: “Was it really bad?”

 _What?_ Eliot asks.

“When the monster - when you were stuck in the memory prison,” Quentin says, soft, uncertain. “Was it - are you -”

// They go to Brakebills - because Kady’s place isn’t safe anymore, because the Library can’t be trusted, because Brakebills’ wards are back to normal now that the fire spiders have been successfully eradicated - and because they don’t know where the hell else to go.

They go to the cafeteria because Margo’s hungry. (“Why the fuck are you looking at me like that? We had an early breakfast and a lot of shit’s happened since then. Jesus.”) The cafeteria’s mostly empty - they’re a little late for lunch - and there’s a weird, edgy feeling in the air. Kady heads for the Library travel-point to give Alice an update, while Julia goes to meet up with Todd at Fogg’s office; the rest of them pick at the tray of sandwiches that Margo brings over.

Julia comes back first, her mouth pressed into a grim line. 

“One of those fountain portals opened up here about twenty minutes ago, over by the greenhouses. A couple of mini pterodactyl-like things flew through, but they caught them almost right away - no one got hurt. But Todd says that reports of spontaneous portals are coming in from all over the world - the faculty are having a meeting, trying to figure out -” 

Kady comes through the door of the cafeteria at a run, aiming straight for Penny. “Take me to the Library, right fucking now!” 

“What the -”

“The Travel-card’s not working, I need you to take me, let’s go!” Kady barks, and Penny blinks, then nods and grabs Kady’s shoulder. They stand like that for a few seconds, and then Penny frowns, says, “I can’t - they must be completely locked down, I can’t even get a bead on them -”

“What about the Neitherlands?”

“Yeah, okay, we can do that -” Penny says, and then they’re gone.

“Fuck,” Julia says, and sits down heavily.

“Maybe it’s just - maybe they’re doing some crazy complicated spell to fix the weather magic, so they locked the doors and pulled the metaphorical shutters down,” Margo says, but she doesn’t sound like she’s selling it even to herself; when she’s done talking she reaches over to grab Eliot’s hand, squeezes tight.

Quentin is staring down at his own hands, pressed flat against the table. Eliot wants to take his hand, not even because - just for comfort, the same way Margo is holding his, but Quentin might pull away (or worse, might not pull away, but _want_ to) -

He’s saved by Julia, who leans into Quentin’s shoulder, puts her hand on his arm; Quentin relaxes against her, the smallest bit of tension ebbing out of his face.

Penny and Kady reappear five minutes later, soaking wet and radiating defeat. 

“No dice,” Penny says. “We tried a bunch of different entrances, but the wards - it would take us days to crack them -”

“Weeks,” Kady says dully. “Anything could be happening in there -”

Quentin has gone so still that Eliot is tempted to check that he’s breathing, that he hasn’t - subtly, circumspectly - been turned to stone. 

(And it’s both familiar and not-familiar by now, that’s the worst part - the sudden ache of loss, the way it leaves him cold and empty and strangled, but still surprised somehow, every time - he’d sat next to Margo on her dorm room bed, after they’d gotten back from Fillory, after Josh and Fen - he had tried to put his arm around her, and Margo had stiffened and said, her voice like acid, “I don’t need a hug, I need a fucking plan.” 

“Cigarettes and liquor,” Eliot had said.

“A better plan -”

“No, cigarettes and liquor as bribes, for every goddamn bunny or human or - or fucking ring-tailed lemur that’ll take them,” Eliot had said. “We’re going to set up the most comprehensive spy network Fillory’s ever seen, Bambi -”

And Margo had stopped trying to shrug his arm off, had said, “Tell me more.”)

“Kady, I - I’m -” Julia says.

“Don’t say you’re _sorry_ \- you got what you wanted, you chased your fucking white whale and everyone else can just go to hell, right?” Kady says, fast and vicious, then turns away, running her hands over her face. (Shit, Eliot thinks distantly, maybe she _is_ sleeping with Alice.) 

Julia stares at Kady’s back, her hand clenched tight on Quentin’s arm.

“We don’t know what’s causing this,” Penny says. “We don’t know what -”

“I know, I know,” Kady says. “Don’t fucking listen to me, I can’t -” 

Julia takes a deep breath, says, “We could try sending a bunny through - they can slip through all kinds of magical boundaries, and there’s one at the Cottage right now -” 

“Then what the fuck are we waiting for?” Kady says. //

Eliot lifts his head, looks at Quentin in surprise. _No, it wasn’t -_

“Julia said that when she was possessed - but maybe it was different for you, I didn’t even ask -” Quentin says.

 _It wasn’t that bad_ , Eliot says. _It was shitty, once I figured out what was going on, but I wasn’t trapped in a hell dimension or anything - from everything I’ve heard, it was still better than being out here with_ him _-_

Something flickers across Quentin’s face, and he drops his eyes.

 _It’s mostly that I was stuck in there_ , Eliot says. _And now whenever I go back, it’s like -_

“Like it’s still happening,” Quentin says. 

_Yeah_ , Eliot says. He shifts his feet, bracing his shoulders back against the wall, hiding his wince at the change in position. Penny and Kady have abandoned the steps, Penny to stand against the side of the Cottage with his head down, his hand pressed to his collarbone, and Kady to pace up and down the path leading to the front lawn, where the first few drops of rain are starting to speckle the puddles in their craters of mud and snow. 

“That’s so -” Quentin says, and kicks at the steps, hard. “It’s so fucking - _unfair_ , and I know how stupid that sounds, but - you love the Cottage. It’s your home as much as Fillory, and - and that’s gone too -” He steps closer, turns his face up to Eliot; he looks furious and heartsick and ready to wage war against the vagaries of fate on Eliot’s behalf. “I’m just so fucking sorry that you lost that.”

Eliot looks down at him, thinks: there are worse things to lose. The wind picks up, a damp gust sweeping its way under the overhang, making Eliot shiver. He says, _Well. I’m - I’m working on it. On getting it back._

Quentin looks at him - and Margo comes through the door, shovel in one hand, blanket and knife in the other, Julia right behind her, carrying a brown lop-eared rabbit in her arms. 

“Here, let me send it,” Kady says, hurrying forward. 

“Hold up, I think I just got a text.” Margo puts the shovel and knife down on the steps, then tucks the blanket under her arm as she pulls her phone out of her pocket. “Holy shit - it’s from Alice.”

“What?” Quentin says, spinning towards her.

Kady and Julia freeze half-way through the transfer of the bunny from Julia to Kady, the rabbit’s ears twitching in alarm as it hangs precariously from both of their hands.

“What does it -” Kady says.

“She’s asking if I’m at Brakebills,” Margo says, frowning down at the phone. “She says, ‘we’re almost at the Cottage’ - who the fuck is ‘we’?”

Penny says, “Oh Jesus fuck - look, look,” urgent, amazed, moving away from the side of the Cottage to point at the pathway -

\- the pathway where Alice is striding up towards the Cottage, flanked by Josh and Fen - all three of their faces slowly lighting up as the front of the Cottage comes into view and they see who’s waiting outside.

“Oh,” Kady says, her hands falling away from the rabbit, which fortunately tumbles back into Julia’s ready arms.

Next to Eliot, Quentin exhales sharply, like he's letting go of a breath that he's been holding for far too long.

Margo makes a noise that Eliot’s never heard from her before, and starts running.

The skies open up then, the rain pouring down, but no one gives a fuck.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mention of suicide in this chapter - Quentin suggests that the circumstances that brought him back to life could be the cause of the problems in the Neitherlands, and so if he was dead again it might solve everything; Eliot worries that Quentin's implying that he should kill himself in order to fix things.
> 
> The chapter title is from the song "We Belong" by Pat Benatar.
> 
> "Just keep swimming" is a line from _Finding Nemo_.
> 
> "I love you," - "I know" is famously from _The Empire Strikes Back_ , as well an echo of Eliot and Margo's scene in All That Josh.
> 
> Linda Blair is the actor who plays the possessed little girl in _The Exorcist_.
> 
> "chasing your white whale" is a reference to _Moby Dick_.
> 
> "trapped in a hell dimension" is a vague _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ reference.


	12. Hearts Laid Open

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She stops, nailing Julia with an iron stare, a High King stare. “This is fucked up, you know that, right? This is fucked up, and it is actively fucking us up, because Quentin is dead and gone and the longer we spend trying to bring him back and failing, the harder it gets to actually deal with it.”
> 
> Julia takes a breath. Counts - _1, 2, 3_ ; lets it out. “I’m not giving up yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mention of suicide in this chapter - please see the end notes for a full description.

Josh has time to say, “Margo, Margo, oh my god,” and then Margo hits him at full speed, her whole body slamming into him, her arms going around his neck, sending them both stumbling backwards onto the ground.

“You fucker, you absolute -” Fen thinks she hears Margo say - and it seems impossible, but she thinks Margo might even be _crying_ \- and then they’re kissing, there on the muddy lawn with the rain coming down around them. Fen swallows, looks away uncomfortably.

Kady is the next to reach them, yanking Alice into a fierce hug, and then pulling back to nod at Fen and say, “Hey, you’re alive, good job.”

“Thank you,” Fen says. “Uh, likewise? Alice was worried about you -”

“I’m okay, we’re all okay,” Kady says, her arm still slung around Alice’s waist. “What the fuck happened?” She looks Alice up and down, taking in her plain gray dress, and adds, “And what the fuck are you wearing?”

Alice rolls her eyes, but doesn’t pull away. “Marina Andrieski turned us all into swans, so my clothes got wrecked and I had to borrow -”

“Marina did _what_?”

Then Eliot’s there, his cane in one hand but his other hand stretched out towards her, and Fen goes to him, lets him tug her forward and fold her into his arms. “Eliot! It’s been so long, it’s so good to see you again!”

Eliot doesn’t say anything, but when she steps back to look at his face he’s beaming at her, his eyes a little wet - or maybe that’s just the rain. He looks so much better than the last time she’d seen him, even though he’s still too pale. 

He lets her go, puts the cane under his arm and moves his hands in a spell, a soft glowing light appearing between his hands and rising to form words. _It’s good to see you too, Fen._

“What -” Fen starts to ask, and then sees who else has come across the lawn from the Cottage. “Umber’s balls - Quentin, you’re -”

Quentin is staring at Alice and Kady, an odd look on his face, but he turns around when Fen addresses him, raising his hand in an awkward wave. “Hey, Fen.”

Fen narrows her eyes at him. “Are you an alternate timeline version?”

“Uh, no,” Quentin says. “I’m -”

“A vampire? A zombie?”

“No -”

“A previously undisclosed identical twin?” Fen asks suspiciously. “Oh! Did you steal a life pocket-watch from the Underworld and wind it back to give yourself more time?”

“Isn’t that the plot of _All Dogs Go to Heaven_?” Quentin says.

“Possibly,” Fen says. “Josh has been telling me about a lot of different movies, so -”

“I’m not a twin, I don’t have a pocket-watch,” Quentin says, shrugging. “I’m just me.”

Fen pulls him into a tight hug. “Good. I’m glad you’re not dead.”

Quentin hugs her back, says, “Me too - I mean, I’m glad that I’m not dead and I’m glad that you’re not dead. What the hell happened to you guys?”

“We fell through a fountain -” Fen starts to say, but then Julia’s hugging her, saying, “Thank god you’re okay - also, love the outfit.”

“Thanks!” Fen says, and raises her arms to show off her long coat. “I can hide so many knives under it.”

Margo and Josh have untangled themselves enough to sit up, and Josh yells, “Holy crap, Quentin, my man! You’re back!” while Margo says, laughing, covered in mud, happy in a way that Fen has very seldom seen, “Fen! If you wanna come down here, I’ll totally make out with you too - Alice, you too, what the hell -”

“This is great, really, it’s awesome that nobody’s dead, but maybe we could get out of the rain?” Penny says.

 _Penny’s right - priorities, people! If there’s going be an orgy, we have to set up the orgy tent first_ , Eliot says. 

The afternoon becomes a bit of a blur after that, because people start spilling out of the Cottage to see what all the commotion on the lawn is about, and some of those people know Josh and some of them don’t, but they all seem ready and willing to embrace the festive, celebratory atmosphere with a staggering degree of enthusiasm. And then more people start wandering over from Brakebills’ main campus, and before long there are multiple tents covering the lawn, along with music, floating lights, fold-out chairs, and several bonfires - a party in full swing.

And it’s not that Fen can’t appreciate a good party, it’s just - she’d woken up on the side of a mountain this morning, wrapped in her bedroll, tucked close against the mossy stone with Josh still sleeping warm beside her, and since then she’s climbed a third of a mountain, ran pell-mell through torrential rain in the Neitherlands, and stalked an intruder in the Library - and now she’s sitting in a (large, absurdly luxurious) tent, on yet another strange world (if a more familiar kind of strange), sipping from her second glass of wine and trying very hard not to fall asleep onto Eliot’s shoulder. 

She should pay attention to the conversation, she really should, there’s so much to catch up on - but the scrapes on her hands hurt, and her socks are still a little damp, and exhaustion and alcohol are wrapping a soft fuzzy blanket around her. She leans harder into Eliot - they’re jammed onto a low sofa along with Julia, the others scattered across the tent’s giant floor pillows (Margo and Josh are practically sitting on top of each other - and Fen is not staring at them, she is _not_ -).

She takes a gulp of wine, forces herself to listen to what Josh is saying. He’s nearly reached the end of their story, having covered the coup by the Dark King (“these fucking shadow creatures, just everywhere, out of nowhere -”), their imprisonment and escape (“so I figured out the variation for a minnow transformation, and then the naiads - who were actually really chill once Fen promised to keep everyone out of their personal waters - guided us out through the drains -”), their brief stay with the fairies (“Skye says hi, Julia -”), their journey through Deka after being attacked in the Neitherlands and falling into its fountain (“we fucking booked it out of Nev City in the middle of the night and headed for the hills, literally - picture, like, Chicago in the twenties but built into pillars of rock, and more zeppelins, and also smack in the middle of the California Gold Rush -”), and their long-awaited return to the Neitherlands (“we climbed out of the fountain into the middle of a monsoon, and then _immediately_ ran into the local Mad Max fan club again - we made it to a Library entrance this time, but as soon as we get in, we’re collared by this asshole on a power trip who tries to zap us to Library jail - except then he turns into a motherfucking swan -”); now he’s holding his hands out dramatically as he launches into the climax of Marina’s attack.

“So me and Alice are on the floor, trapped by the book-cart, helpless, I’m totally out of it - and then Fen -” He looks at her, grinning, and Fen can’t help but smile back - Josh with an appreciative audience is Josh in his element. “Fen fucking drops out of the ceiling -”

“I didn’t drop out of the ceiling, I -” 

“- and tases Marina, just takes her out effortlessly, and then she says -” 

Josh waves a hand at her expectantly, and Fen shakes her head at him, but obliges: “Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker,” and hides her smug grin with another drink of wine as everyone erupts in laughter.

“Yes!” Josh says. “And I missed it, I can’t believe it -” He turns to Alice. “It was awesome, right? Tell me it was awesome.”

“I’ve never seen _Die Hard_ ,” Alice says, and Josh groans, but then she adds, “But Fen was pretty awesome, yeah.”

“So what was Marina after?” Penny says.

“We still don’t know,” Alice says, shrugging. “The book she was trying to steal is a life book, an ancient one - it’s not even really a book, it’s a set of scrolls in a book-shaped box.” 

“Whose book is it?” Julia asks, leaning forward.

“That’s the thing - the name’s been burned off the binding, and the scrolls are unreadable, same as all the other life books,” Alice says. “So we’re searching the Poison Room records, but no luck so far - and Marina’s not talking.”

“Shocker,” Kady says.

“We’re cooking up some truth serum to dose her with,” Alice says. She sighs, rubs at her forehead. “I need to head back soon, it’s a mess over there. We’re still finding Librarians who haven’t been de-swanned, the water in the Neitherlands is rising, and not being able to read the books is making everyone as twitchy as fuck. I think it’s too much like when magic got turned off, and we don’t even know whether it’s connected to the storm or just another side-effect of the rise in ambient magic - which is still going up, by the way, even though it’s been months since Everett’s magic flooded back into the system. We can’t track where it’s coming from, so odds are the problem is either at the source, in fucking Blackspire, or -”

Alice stops, her eyes darting to Quentin for a split second and then away.

“Or what?” Quentin says.

Alice fiddles with the shimmery purple tassels on her pillow. “Or the problem might be at the Seam. Zelda thinks that the mirror could be - leaking.”

Quentin stares at her blankly for a second, then says, “You think that when I fixed the mirror, I actually fucked it up so badly that it’s hemorrhaging magic?” 

“No,” Alice says, sharp, raising her head. “No, I - I don’t know. It’s more likely it was the fucking nuclear bomb of magic that exploded when Everett - when he died right it front of it -” Alice’s voice chokes off, and she abruptly shoves herself to her feet, stumbling a little over the squashy pillows. “Anyway, I should go -”

“Alice -” Quentin says, starting to get up as well, but Kady’s faster, hopping to her feet and saying, “You want me to come with?”

Alice doesn’t stop moving towards the tent flap, but she shoots Kady a grateful look, says,“No, you should get some sleep, you’ve been awake for over thirty hours. Go borrow a bed in the Cottage -”

Kady shrugs, following her. “Yeah, maybe I will - gimme your phone first, I need to get hold of Pete, see how the hedges are doing -”

Quentin sinks back down onto his pillow, watches them leave. 

Fen looks at Josh, widening her eyes, and Josh blinks, then says brightly, “Hey, you know what I bet is ready? The barbecue, who wants barbecue?”

Barbecue, as it turns out, is delicious, and Fen’s halfway through her second plate of ribs when Margo drops onto the folding chair next to her and says, “Josh and I are heading to my room for a marathon round of ‘holy shit I thought you were dead’ reunion fucking, we’ll be back in - oh, say a few hours? We’ll need a breather and some refreshments by then.”

Fen takes a savage bite of meat off the rib clutched in her hands. “Great! That’s great, sounds fun,” she says, once she’s done chewing.

“Yeah,” Margo says, but then doesn’t say anything else, and doesn’t move. Fen puts the rib bone back onto the plate in her lap, licks the sauce off her fingers - 

\- and Margo’s _looking_ at her, her eyes dark and intent - and Fen blushes, thinks: so much for courtly manners, a few seasons away from your castle and here you are, right back to being that peasant girl who bartered her way to a crown - 

“We need to talk, you and me,” Margo says, and Fen goes still - (how can she possibly know) - and then Margo continues, “About Fillory, about our game plan.”

“Oh,” Fen says, relaxing, and then frowns. “Our game plan? My game plan is that I’m going back tomorrow morning. I’ve been away too long already -”

“Exactly, it’s been three hundred years too long,” Margo says. “I know we’re all big fans of winging it around here, but we could use a couple more days to strategize, especially now that you and Josh can give us some inside info -”

“I can strategize in Fillory - I’ll go back to the fairies’ lands, you said they weren’t affected by the time magic -”

“And you said that you lost the talisman that they gave you to pass back across their border without getting skewered -”

Fen opens her mouth - _she_ isn’t the one who’d lost the talisman, to be completely accurate it hadn’t been lost at all, Josh had skimmed over that part of the story - then changes her mind, says instead, “I’ll figure something out - there has to be another way to prove that I am who I say I am. I have to go back, okay? It’s my home, it’s my kingdom -”

“It’s _our_ kingdom -” Margo says. 

Fen says, “It was mine last.”

Margo stares at her, and Fen feels her eyelid twitch, her hands going sweaty, but she doesn’t look away, doesn’t take it back. 

After what seems like a very long few seconds, Margo says, “Okay, I’ll give you that one, though for the record, only one of us got it by popular vote instead of a sort-of violent overthrow.” Her mouth curls up at one corner. “Possession’s nine-tenths anyway - technically it’s neither of ours. We’re just a couple of temporarily embarrassed monarchs in exile together.”

“Very temporarily,” Fen says.

“Damn straight,” Margo says.

They sit in silence for a while, the music and chatter of the party swirling around them, the rain bouncing off the shield spells overhead. A small bonfire crackles nearby, warding off some of the air’s damp chill, and Fen watches the flames sway and leap (last night she’d been sitting beside a campfire on the side of a mountain on a different world, telling Josh about the time her mother took her to watch the will-o’-the-wisps perform their yearly dance over the Northern Marsh); Margo’s looking at the fire too, her face gone still and pensive. 

“Let us sit upon the ground, and tell sad stories of the death of kings,” Margo says eventually, her voice so soft that Fen can barely hear her.

Fen doesn’t recognize the reference, and she’s not in the mood to ask for an explanation, so she wrinkles her nose and says, “Let’s not.”

Margo laughs, throwing her head back, her somber mood vanishing. “Yeah, you’re right, let’s not - unless they’re about the death of a certain nameless shadowy usurper whose ass we’re gonna kick. Fuck - see, that’s what I get for keeping Eliot company while he jerked off to another rewatch of _The Hollow Crown_.” She looks at Fen. “If you go back to Fillory tomorrow, you know we’re coming with you.”

Fen swallows, says, “You don’t have to -”

“Zip it,” Margo says. “There’s no place like fucking home, right?”

Fen does recognize _that_ one. She gives Margo a deliberately innocent look. “Do you think we could talk Penny into clicking his heels together three times?”

Margo laughs again, and then Josh strolls up to them with a bowl full of strawberries in his hands and a bottle of wine under his arm. He executes a deep, very nearly graceful bow in front of them, without dropping either the bottle or a single strawberry. “Your Majesties.”

Margo says, “Prince Josh,” acknowledging his bow with a fake-solemn nod, but her eyes are shining, her voice warm and affectionate. She stands up from her chair and takes the bowl of strawberries out of his hands. “Alright, let’s make tracks. We’ve got a hell of a lot of time to make up for.”

Josh smiles at her, equally besotted, and then looks down at Fen, still in her chair. “Hey, we’ll see you later, yeah? Now that I finally have a real kitchen again, I’ll try and make that cake for you, like I promised.”

“Right, yeah,” Fen says, tries to sound appropriately enthusiastic. “Cake. Later. Fantastic, can’t wait.” It’s stupid to be - it’s not like she didn’t know this was coming, not like she hasn’t listened to Josh talk about how much he misses Margo for countless hours over the last almost-a-year. She’d hoped for it even - had worried that they would show up on Earth to find centuries gone by, their friends long dead (no, that’s Fillory - Sweet Umber, how are they going to - but Eliot had said it might be fixable -); she’s happy for Josh. She is.

Josh hesitates, like he wants to say something else, but then just gives her another quick ironic bow before turning away, slipping his arm around Margo’s waist as they walk off. 

Fen sits for a moment, holding her empty plate tight in her hands, then gets up. She stacks the plate on the table with the other dirty dishes (is someone going to use magic to wash them? Or are the dishes magic themselves, do they disappear back into the ether when the party’s done?) and looks around for the others.

She spots Julia, talking in a small huddle with some students that Fen doesn’t know. Fen stands still, wavering - she’s not sure if she wants to try and make conversation with strangers right now - but then she sees Eliot and Quentin, walking rather unsteadily back towards the tent, Eliot’s free arm thrown across Quentin’s shoulders, and she hurries over to them. 

They’re arguing - well, Quentin’s arguing, saying, “Just lie down for an hour or so, the last thing we need is you bashing your head open because you’ve got the fucking _spins_ -” while Eliot makes a series of rude and inventive faces at him. 

“Eliot, are you okay?” Fen says, holding the tent flap open for them.

Yes! Eliot says silently, rolling his eyes, his mouth moving with exaggerated effort around the word, but his legs don’t seem to agree as he and Quentin wobble their way across the tent to the curtained-off alcoves at the back.

“No, you’re not,” Quentin says, depositing Eliot carefully on to the low day-bed in the alcove. Eliot gives him the finger, but lies back on the bed without any further protests, keeping his good leg out and bent, foot pressed firmly to the floor. 

Quentin takes Eliot’s cane, leaning it against the side of the bed, then says to Fen, “He drank too much wine - apparently he’s not supposed to be drinking at all with the meds he’s on -”

Eliot moves his hands clumsily through the pool of light spell, then says, _I had_ two _glasses, give me a fucking break - do you know how much shit I’ve mixed with other shit in my time?_

“Yeah, and now you’re loopy off two glasses of wine, how the mighty have fallen,” Quentin says, yanking the blanket folded on the bed out from under Eliot’s long legs.

 _Two glasses of wine and all the Percocet_ , Eliot says. He’s blinking slowly like he’s having a hard time keeping his eyes open. 

Quentin freezes for a second, his mouth going tight.

“Here, I’ll help,” Fen says, and together she and Quentin unfold the velvety red blanket and spread it across Eliot on the bed. 

_Fen_ , Eliot says, smiling up at her. _Hey. It’s so good you’re back._ He glances back and forth between her and Quentin. _You’re both back! And Josh, and Bambi’s so happy - this is like, the best day._

Quentin huffs out a laugh so weary and bitter that Fen looks at him in surprise. “Sure, only a couple of murder attempts, some actual murder, a few hitches here and there of the catastrophic, multiple-worlds-ending variety -”

Eliot just blinks at him, heavy-eyed, says, _It’s the best day._

He reaches for Quentin where he’s gripping the armrest of the day-bed, wraps his hand loosely around Quentin’s wrist. He says something else silently - the pool of light spell having broken - but Fen can’t make it out.

“What?” Quentin says, bending forward, but Eliot’s eyes are sliding closed, his fingers uncurling from their hold. Quentin tugs Eliot’s hand away, places it gently back on the bed.

“It’s - it’s so good that you’re back, too,” Fen says. “I think he -” She stops - she isn’t sure how to say it, isn’t sure she understands what’s between Eliot and Quentin, doesn’t want to say the wrong thing, and: _when I saw him in the infirmary after, when I went to see that he was alive and alright with my own two eyes - he was alive, but it was like he was missing a piece of himself, like some ghostly hunter had carved out half his heart and carried it away - he’s so much more whole now, even with the silence where his voice should be -_ that might be the wrong thing, that might be more than Eliot wants seen or told.

She settles for, “He really missed you.”

“Yeah,” Quentin says, gives her a small smile. “Thanks.” 

They leave Eliot sleeping, walk quietly back to the front of the tent and then outside again.

“Is it okay to leave him alone?” Fen says.

“It should be fine. He let me do a monitoring spell that’s hooked in to the infirmary, we used it at the Cottage when people got shit-faced,” Quentin says. “It’ll set off an alarm if anything happens - hey, there’s Julia.”

Quentin starts to head towards her, but Fen says, “Go ahead, I’m going to walk around, take in the sights,” and waves her hand at the cheerful chaos surrounding them on the lawn.

“Oh, sure, see you later,” Quentin says, and Fen goes to explore the party.

She wanders through the tents for a while - several of them have been connected together to create a maze of multi-colored rooms decorated in wildly different styles: Fen skitters through the naked tea party room, but most of them are less unnerving - the one full of floating pink bubbles, the one that’s hot as a summer’s day with sand on the floor and bright flowers adorning every surface, the one with pounding music and a crowd of people dancing under a starry night sky. 

In a tent filled with thick, soft rugs, a haze of smoke hanging in the air, Fen feels a tug on the bottom of her coat, and looks down to see a girl lying on her back on the floor, smiling blurrily up at her. 

“I’m thirsty,” the girl says. “Bring me some water and I’ll tell your fortune.”

“I haven’t had the best luck with that kind of thing,” Fen says, but she walks back through to the summer tent and gets a bottle of water from the guy mixing cocktails behind the tiny flower-draped bar, then comes back and, kneeling down, hands it to the girl on the floor.

“Thanks,” the girl says, lifting her head up to take a long drink.

“You know what - actually? You don’t need to tell my fortune,” Fen says. “Prophecies mostly seem like they’re more trouble than they’re worth.”

“You’re nice.”

“That’s me,” Fen says, sighing, but then the girl stretches out and catches Fen’s hand as she starts to stand up. 

She presses a soft kiss to Fen’s knuckles, and Fen shivers. “Once and future,” the girl murmurs.

“What?” Fen says.

The girl lets go of her hand, her head drifting back to the floor. “You’re nice, I said. Wanna hang out, party with me?”

“Um - maybe later,” Fen says, standing up and sidling towards the exit. 

She needs some fresh air, so she goes outside, stands on the lawn and breathes in deeply, cold clean air in her lungs. She sees Julia again - by herself this time, sitting on a folding chair smoking a cigarette, so Fen walks over to sit next to her. 

“Hey,” Julia says, and flashes a strained smile at her. “Having a good time?”

“Yes, for sure,” Fen says; then at Julia’s unconvinced look, “It’s - been a long day.”

“Fucking tell me about it,” Julia mutters. 

“Is Quentin -”

“He went in the Cottage to get an extra sweater about half an hour ago,” Julia says. “He’s probably holed up in there, which is standard operating procedure for Q at parties, so I’m sitting out here trying to convince myself not to go track him down like a -” She cuts herself off, takes another drag from her cigarette.

“Are you okay?” Fen says.

“Sure, why wouldn’t I be,” Julia says. “I got five people fucking magically eviscerated in Kady’s apartment today -”

“They were coming to kill you,” Fen says. “You didn’t even kill them, the Baba Yaga -”

“I _know_ ,” Julia snaps, then says more quietly, “That doesn’t help as much as you’d think.”

“I’m sorry,” Fen says. 

“Yeah,” Julia says. She draws her legs up onto the chair, her knees pulled up to her chin, and wraps her arms around herself. “Want to hear the really fucked-up part?”

Fen looks at her.

“I don’t even regret it - I’d steal that egg again in a heartbeat. Because I got Q back. Because I got what I wanted.”

“You’re a good friend,” Fen says.

“Is that what I am?” Julia says, and then waves her hand at Fen, “No, don’t - forget I said that, you shouldn’t have to deal with my crap right now. How are you doing?”

“I’m -” Fen says, then sighs. “I just - I know it wasn’t that long here, but for me it was almost a year - a Fillorian year, which is longer than an Earth year -”

“I know,” Julia says, but she’s smiling a little.

“Right, so it was almost a whole year where - it was just me and Josh, and we had one goal, you know? To find a way out of that stupid world, to get back to the Neitherlands, back to Earth and Fillory - and now we’re here, we did it, but - there’s still so much to do, and Fillory is -” she throws her hand in the air to indicate ‘ruled by a crazy-powerful dark magician and time-magicked three centuries into the future’, “- and things are messed-up here too, and Josh is off with Margo -” Fen stops, biting her lip, because the look on Julia’s face is suddenly _too_ understanding.

“Not that - not that that’s -” Fen says.

“No, no, I get it,” Julia says, and takes a final drag of her cigarette before stubbing it out on the ground. “Hey. I’ve got ice cream in the kitchen. You want some ice cream?”

“Could I have a milkshake?” Fen asks. “I had one at the Shake Shack in the city of New York, and it was _amazing_.”

“I will totally make you a milkshake,” Julia says. She gets out of her chair, offers Fen a hand up. “I promise to do my best to put Shake Shack to shame.” 

It’s a couple of hours later by the time they leave the Cottage’s warm kitchen to brave the party on the lawn again - Quentin along with them, after they’d found him sleeping on one of the sofas in the main room, wedged into a corner with his head tilted back in a position that hadn’t looked at all comfortable.

Dusk is falling, the wet cloudy day turning into a wet cloudy night, but the party is still in full swing. (“It’s been a weird day for Brakebills, too,” Julia had said, shrugging. “I mean, fire spiders, random portals, exam week - everyone’s on edge. It’s good to have an excuse to let off some steam.”) Julia had gotten a text from Alice saying that she was back from the Library, and as they walk across the lawn, Fen sees Alice standing next to one of the bonfires, deep in conversation with Margo, Josh, and Penny. 

“There they are,” Fen says. They start to make their way through the tents, nudging past the throngs of students - 

\- and then the music changes. Not the way it sounds, exactly, although this new song does sound happier, more upbeat to Fen’s ears, but the way it feels - suddenly the music has a hook in her chest and it’s dragging her forward, her feet moving in time - she can feel the beat of it in her pulse -

It’s like the time Margo had enspelled the whole castle into a song before the duel with the Lorians, but if that magic had been a strongly worded invitation to participate, this is more like a _compulsion_ -

Fen looks wildly at Julia and Quentin. “Is this -” Normal, she means to say, part of the party, maybe, Ember only knows what Earth magicians get up to for fun - but she can already see from their bewildered faces that it’s not. 

“Oh, goddamnit -” Julia has time to say - 

\- and then the music sweeps Fen away, and she has no idea what she was worried about, because this is incredible - she feels fizzy and light, like the pink bubbles from the tent have made their way into her veins instead, and she’s whirling into the dance along with everybody else on the lawn. 

She’s singing too, the words coming easily to her lips - clocks striking and suns fading and chasing away the blues - and she doesn’t realize that she’s been dancing closer and closer to Josh and Margo until she spins around to see them right in front of her. 

They’re dancing together, of course, pressed against each other, tight, tight, Josh’s hands sliding down Margo’s back - and Fen’s stomach drops, even through the spell’s euphoria; she uses the brief moment of clarity to turn away, throw herself into the arms of the nearest partnerless dancer, ignore the way the music wants her to keep pushing forward, to go to them (to dance with them) -

“Oh, I wanna dance with somebody,” Fen sings it along with the rest of the crowd on the lawn, and she laughs, twirls from partner to partner, and doesn’t let herself look at Josh and Margo again.

*

Okay, when Kady figures out which fucking asshole ex-theater kid decided to live out their _Glee_ -inspired wet dream by press-ganging half of Brakebills into a fucking dance flash mob, she’s going to hang them by their fucking ankles from the top of the clock-tower -

\- but at least they picked a bop. 

It might even be kinda fun, if she ignores the non-consensual magic aspect and just pretends it’s a really weird high, right up until she sees Alice moving towards her through the crowd, something soft and hopeful in her eyes.

“ - I need someone who’ll take a chance, on a love that -” and no, fuck it, Kady can’t do this, this is too much, this is too - and she freezes up, stops singing even though her body keeps moving in time to the music. 

And Alice - they’re only about five feet apart now - Alice sees it, sees the way Kady just stops, and her face falls, and she turns away.

Kady lunges across the space between them. 

She catches hold of Alice’s wrist, pulls her back around, pulls her closer - and then they’re dancing together, Alice’s arms around her neck, their faces close - Alice is flushed and sweaty and her hair is starting to wave at her temples, and she’s smiling, smiling just for Kady.

*

Julia is not in the fucking mood. She’s pretty sure she can guess who’s responsible for this dumbass party trick, and she’s going to nail those shit-for-brains to the wall this time, she doesn’t care what Todd says.

She doesn’t bother trying to fight the spell, just lets her body move with it, sings along with the crowd, and quietly plots vengeance -

\- and then Penny’s there, staring her with those eyes, like he could look at her forever and never be done, and Julia steps towards him without even thinking about it -

No. No, fuck this. Julia stops - she can’t quite make herself stop dancing, but she plants her feet, stares down at the ground, refuses to take another step.

When she dares to look up again, Penny’s gone.

Julia’s throat is burning, but the music twists through her, keeps her singing even as she spins away - and sees Quentin standing stock-still at the edge of the crowd. He looks terrible, he looks like his world is falling apart - Julia turns, and - oh. 

He’s watching Alice and Kady dancing together - he’s watching them dance _together_.

*

That feeling you get when you fall off something, or get knocked down, and land hard on your back - the way all the air is just gone, and you can’t even tell if it hurts or not because the only thing you can focus on is that you _can’t fucking breathe_ \- 

And maybe it’s stupid, because maybe he should have guessed, maybe everyone already knows except him and they all assumed that he would be smart enough to figure it out without someone having to sit him down and explain - (explain that Quentin killed himself in front of her, isn’t that what Alice said?) - no, explain that Quentin’s been fucking dead for almost six months, so how could he expect Alice to - 

And besides, doesn’t he - deserve this, at least a little? (That morning when he’d woken up, naked, Eliot and Margo next to him, Alice at the end of the bed, refusing to look at him -) 

He backs away, bounces off the side of a tent but doesn’t stop stumbling backwards, he needs - he needs to get away - someone reaches out and touches his elbow, a light glancing touch, but it steadies him and he looks -

Eliot’s standing there, cane in one hand but the other hovering next to Quentin’s arm, and he’s - not singing, but his mouth is shaping the words that the whole crowd on the lawn is belting out, even Quentin, “Don’t you wanna dance, say you wanna dance -”

Eliot’s looking at him, and Quentin steps closer, and - they’re not dancing exactly, mostly just swaying to the music. 

(Quentin doesn’t dance anyway, unless Julia sweet-talks him into it or he’s very, very drunk -) (but they’d danced at the mosaic, hadn’t they - Eliot’s arms coming around from behind him, his body pressed close, humming some Motown-sounding thing in Quentin’s ear - “Jesus Christ, haven’t I indulged enough of your _Dirty Dancing_ fantasies,” Quentin had said, laughing, and Eliot had said, “Nope, those fantasies are an ever-renewable resource, and you have to indulge them all,” and kissed his neck -) 

They’re standing very close. They’re not touching - Eliot’s hand is still in the air, an inch away from Quentin’s arm, but they’re almost - if Quentin takes one more step, they’ll be -

Eliot’s face is - open, bared, somehow - (like - like when he was standing on the other side of a glass wall in a small dark room, his hands pressed against the glass), and Quentin sings, “- with somebody who loves me,” and doesn’t look away.

The song ends, and everyone on the lawn jerks to a sudden halt.

Eliot’s eyes go wide. Quentin steps back, fast. 

There is a very loud, ringing silence, broken by Todd’s exasperated voice. “The _fucking_ first years.”

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mention of suicide in this chapter - briefly mentioned as Quentin recalls Alice saying that he'd 'killed himself in front of her' (although Alice had meant it in terms of a self-sacrifice rather than suicide).
> 
> The title of the chapter comes from the song "What You Feel" from Once More, with Feeling, the musical episode of _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_. The lyric is: All those hearts laid open, that must sting!
> 
> "Temporarily embarrassed monarchs" is a riff off Ronald Wright's quote in A Short History of Progress saying that in America the poor see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
> 
> "Let us sit upon the ground - " is a quote from Shakespeare's _Richard II_.
> 
> "There's no place like home," is from _The Wizard of Oz_.
> 
> "Once and future," is a reference to the King Arthur novel _The Once and Future King_.
> 
> The song that everyone gets magically roped into dancing to at the end is "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) by Whitney Houston, although I've been listening to the Fall Out Boy cover for inspiration.
> 
> (Alternate title to this chapter: Nobody Puts Q in the Corner)


	13. Cost-Benefit Analysis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She stops, nailing Julia with an iron stare, a High King stare. “This is fucked up, you know that, right? This is fucked up, and it is actively fucking us up, because Quentin is dead and gone and the longer we spend trying to bring him back and failing, the harder it gets to actually deal with it.”
> 
> Julia takes a breath. Counts - _1, 2, 3_ ; lets it out. “I’m not giving up yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mention of suicide in this chapter - please see the end notes for a full description.

Penny leaves the party early. 

He Travels to his room in the Cottage, to just inside the doorway, then closes the door behind him, collapses on the bed, closes his eyes. He can still hear the music from outside, along with the muted psychic buzz from the portions of the crowd whose warding is less than stellar. 

And then he hears a noise from the far side of his own room, a wet, sticky, weird-as-fuck noise, and opens his eyes in a hurry.

WE NEED TO TALK is scrawled across the mirror in dark blue writing.

“No way, you can fuck right off,” Penny says, closing his eyes again. “We’ve talked our last talk, go hang out with the other psychics. And I told you to knock it off with the creepy lipstick on the mirror thing.”

There are more sticky-scritching noises of lipstick against glass.

“I’m not looking,” Penny says, eyes firmly shut.

A long pause, and then there’s a bang and a _smash_ \- and Penny sits up in bed, looks down at the water glass that’s now in pieces on the floor. “Fuck, that’s it, I’m getting Fogg to incorporate-bond your annoying ass to the bottom of the ocean floor -”

The lipstick floats in the air, writing even larger this time: PENNY THIS IS IMPORTANT Q NEEDS YOUR HELP COME ON!

“You’ve got to fucking kidding me,” Penny says, but sighs, sits up properly, resting his hands on his crossed legs, and lets his mind slip free of his body.

“P-23, buddy!” Hyman says, spreading his arms wide like he thinks they’re going to hug. “Okay, first of all, I used blue lipstick this time, way less creepy than red, right? And I know we had that talk where I swore on my own non-existent grave that I wouldn’t -”

“What the hell do you want?” Penny says. 

“I’ve been chilling with the psychics, like I said I would - all incredibly rude, but for sheer entertainment value they’re hard to beat, the levels of drama are practically Byzantine - but then there was this big hullabaloo on the Cottage’s lawn today, so I popped over to -”

Penny shakes his head, says, “One incorporate bond, coming right up -”

“You need to go check on Quentin, he’s drinking alone in the third bathroom on the second floor, the one with the picture of the mermaids on the door,” Hyman says, all in one breath, then adds, “He’s - not doing so good.”

Penny’s floating on the astral plane, temporarily free of the aches and pains of the mortal coil - but he can still feel their echo, the tether of his body pulling at him, back in the world: he’s fucking exhausted, the maenad bite on his chest is burning, hot and painful, and he’s got a headache the size of Manhattan. The list of what he wants is short: pills enough to numb his body and brain, and sleep, in that order (and Julia - always Julia). What doesn’t appear on the list: dealing with Quentin’s sad fucking feelings. But - 

“Fine,” Penny says. “I’ll go tell Julia -”

(Julia had cornered him after the dance spell fiasco, her whole body one tight line of tension; Penny had said, “Julia, can we -” and Julia had said, “Have you seen Q?”

“No,” Penny had said.

“He looked - I’m just a little worried -”

“Julia,” Penny had said. “I’m sorry. For - before, what happened, what I did - I want you to know that I’m sorry.” He had meant to say more, but he’d gotten stuck there, his mouth opening and closing uselessly (the truth and nothing but; but not the whole truth).

Julia had looked at him, uncertain, waiting for more, then had said, “Okay. I - okay, thanks. I’m gonna go look for Q, let me know if you see him.”

“Yeah,” Penny had said, and watched her walk away.)

“Julia went off somewhere with Fogg - sounded serious, I don’t think we should interrupt,” Hyman says.

“Okay, then Eliot, or Alice -”

Hyman makes a deeply skeptical face. “Maybe you haven’t been paying attention, but I don’t think either of them would be the best choice right now -”

“Dude, maybe _you_ haven’t been paying attention, but _I_ am definitely not the best choice to baby-sit Coldwater’s drunk emo ass -” Quentin still hasn’t fixed his wards since this morning, and Penny’s been wading through his emotional overflow all day - and god knows it’s been one gruesome motherfucker of a day, so he hasn’t complained about it, which should totally absolve him from all other Quentin-related caretaking duties. 

“You won’t put up with his bullshit, and you can go through the door without breaking it down first,” Hyman says flatly.

Penny blinks, feels his stomach tighten. “Are we - at the breaking-down-the-door point already?”

“Well, no, probably not,” Hyman says. “But - look, you guys brought Q back from the dead last night! Sure, there may be some unforeseen consequences, but overall I’m _loving_ that plot twist, and it would be very anti-climactic if he died from alcohol poisoning on the bathroom floor after all that - ”

“Anti-climactic?” Penny says, incredulous. “God, you’re the worst.”

“It would be sad, okay?” Hyman snaps. “It would be really fucking sad, it was sad enough the first time.” He crosses his arms, glares at Penny belligerently.

“Shit,” Penny says. “Shit, fine, I’ll check on him. So beat it - and return whoever’s lipstick you stole.”

Penny knocks on the bathroom door. The painted mermaids on the door look at him with judgy eyes. “Quentin? It’s Penny, open up.”

“Fuck off,” Quentin says through the door.

Penny rolls his eyes and Travels into the bathroom. Quentin’s sitting on the pink-tiled floor, his back against the wall and his legs pulled up, clutching a bottle of tequila and staring at the mirror above the sink on the opposite wall.

The mirror which is - oh, what the fuck - cracking into a dozen pieces, tiny splinters of glass raining down onto the sink, then repairing itself magically, golden light sealing the broken edges together - and then shattering apart again, all while Quentin watches, transfixed. 

“What the fuck are you doing,” Penny says. 

Quentin startles, jerks his head around to look at Penny, guilty surprise replacing the look of sick, horrified fascination on his face. (Quentin’s misery is so thick Penny feels like it’s suffocating him, like he’s the horse disappearing into the fucking swamp in that kid’s movie - a creeping dark sludge made up of the smell of blood, the Monster’s (not Eliot’s) voice saying, “Quentin,” Alice surrounded by blue flames, and weirdly, model planes and a clearing in the forest -)

“What are you - get the fuck out of here,” Quentin says, throwing a hand back against the wall, pushing himself unsteadily to his feet.

“You know what? Never mind, don’t tell me, I don’t even want to know,” Penny says, striding over and reaching for Quentin’s arm. “Come on, cast something quick, burn off the charge, and we’ll go find Julia - ”

“Don’t,” Quentin says, tries to yank back his arm and stand up at the same time, and ends up stumbling hard against the wall. “Just leave me alone -”

There’s a sudden shiver of fear from Quentin at being angrily loomed over, and Penny feels it like an icy trickle down his own back, like the hard press of a hand at his own throat, and he steps back automatically - fuck, fuck, he is so fucking over this, his head is killing him and he is so fucking tired - “Jesus, will you fix your goddamn wards, I’m so sick of having to deal with your crap -”

Quentin stares at him, face flushing red (a hot rush of anger and shame is burning a swath through the swamp, and that’s better, Penny can handle that -). “Why are you even here, anyway? Did Julia finally tell you stop following her around like a kicked puppy?”

“Oh, _fuck_ you,” Penny says, but then the mirror shatters again, and this time the sink cracks too, tiny fault-lines of damage spreading across the ceramic. “For fuck’s sake, do a spell, now!”

“Go fuck yourself,” Quentin says, and takes another swig of tequila.

“I’m not letting you trash the place because you can’t get a lid on your shit,” Penny says, and grabs for Quentin’s arm.

Quentin twists away, snarls, “Don’t fucking -” but Penny makes contact, and then they’re Traveling to the place Penny thinks of as Julia’s beach.

The sun is still setting on the west coast - golden hour - and it’s tingeing the rocky shore with a soft orange glow, lighting up the rivulets of water from melting ice and snow running down through the rocks, from the forest to the sea.

Penny’s breath puffs out in front of him, and he lets go of Quentin’s arm.

“- touch me,” Quentin finishes, and then looks around wildly. “You fucking _asshole_.” He glares at Penny, hard and furious. “Take me back. Right now.”

“I’d fucking love to, as soon as you burn off the charge and redo your wards -”

Quentin spins away from him and hurls the bottle of tequila at the rocks, glass shards flying everywhere as it breaks. 

“Wow, nice, that’s really convincing me to -” Penny says.

“Where the fuck are we?” Quentin says, staring up at the forest beyond the beach, the old-growth trees with their massive branches hanging heavy and thick.

“Alaska Panhandle,” Penny says. “It’s where I take Julia when -” He cuts himself off, says instead, “We can’t go to Fillory, it’s too dangerous right now.”

“Fillory?” Quentin asks, sounding confused. Behind him, the pieces of the tequila bottle are sliding across the rocks, the bottle slowly reforming as they join together.

“That house in the clearing, where you wanted to go - I could see it in your -” Penny stops, with the sinking feeling of having stepped on what seemed like solid ground, only to hear the click of an emotional landmine being triggered.

Quentin looks at him, eyes huge with shock and hurt - and it hits Penny like a punch to the solar plexus - an aching loss like the ground dropping away beneath him, a brief sense-memory of trembling hands gripping a shovel, hacking at the soil (digging a grave for Eliot) - 

And Penny - he doesn’t understand the memory (when the hell did Eliot die in Fillory, why doesn’t anyone ever tell him anything) but the pain of it is so goddamn _familiar_ that it’s all he can do to keep from doubling over. He steps towards Quentin, says, “Shit, man - I’m sorry, I didn’t -”

The remade tequila bottle shatters -

\- and then so do the rocks around it - _crack crack crack_ \- a boulder-sized rock cleaves in two, its halves slamming to the ground with an echoing boom -

Quentin yells, “Get the fuck out of my head!” 

Quentin’s gone as pale as death, his hands clenched into fists, and there’s something like - a feeling like a tidal wave racing into shore, the crest of it rising up impossibly high and dangerous - a flash of a model plane smashing to pieces against a door -

“Fix your fucking wards!” Penny yells back, because the day he’s scared of Quentin motherfucking Coldwater is the day they can burn his fucking body right along with his fucking undead doppelganger’s.

Quentin’s face contorts - and then he turns away, sinks down until he’s sitting on the rocky beach, his head down and his arms curving up to clutch at his neck and hide him from Penny’s view. 

The pieces of the tequila bottle rise quietly into the air and begin to fit themselves back together again (and the tidal wave melts back into the swamp’s dark murky water).

Penny breathes out. He looks away from Quentin’s shaking shoulders, walks over to the newly mended - but empty - tequila bottle.

He forces himself to talk around the lump in his throat. “You couldn’t put the booze back in, too?”

Quentin doesn’t answer, stays curled in his huddle - the noises he’s making are low, choked-off, like he doesn’t want Penny to hear him, as though Penny isn’t already getting a fucking front-row seat to the churning mess that’s Quentin’s head right now -

The bottle breaks apart again, and Penny sighs, then goes to sit down next to Quentin. The rocks are damp and pointy, and the cold immediately starts seeping into his legs and ass.

After a while, Quentin goes quiet, and Penny says, “I buried Julia in Fillory.”

Quentin twitches, turns his head slightly.

“We were in the forest, the four of us - I was scouting ahead,” Penny says. “I was only gone for - less than a minute, less than sixty seconds.” He’s gone over it a million and one times in his head since then, how long he was somewhere else, somewhere other than where he should have been, which was _right fucking next to Julia_ \- 

“I heard screaming.” He touches his temple. “I heard it here, I mean. And I heard it stop.”

Penny swallows; his throat is burning. He can hear the wind blowing through the trees, Quentin breathing next to him. 

“I went back - fast, as fast as I - but. I was.” Late. Too fucking late. “There was blood, just - everywhere. She was -” He can’t talk about Julia’s body, empty and broken on the ground. “The Beast was still there. He said, ‘Run, Penny. I’ll give you a head start.’ And then he was gone. But I had to - I couldn’t just leave her there.”

Quentin makes a small sound next to him, but Penny can’t look at him. He’s never said any of this out loud before. 

“I started digging,” Penny says. “I dug until my hands bled, and then I kind of - woke up enough to use magic to do the rest. I put her down into it, into the grave, and the pieces I could find of - of the other Quentin. I didn’t know Alice got away, I thought that there was - nothing left of her.”

He takes a breath, lets it out. “I filled in the grave,” (covered Julia with dirt) “and then I ran. I hid in the Library, I hid - anywhere, everywhere. I never saw the Beast again. Maybe he lost the trail while I was in the Library, or maybe he knew that he didn’t have to waste his time killing me, because I - I was done. I was in that fucking hole in the ground with Julia anyway, so why fucking bother?”

He hears his voice break, and snaps his mouth shut. He digs his fingernails hard into the skin of his palms, and breathes slow and even until he’s got a handle on it again.

“I’m sorry,” Quentin says. “I didn’t know. Or - I knew, but I didn’t -” He’s sitting there watching Penny, his eyes red and swollen, his damp face clearly having gotten only the most cursory swipe with his sleeve. 

“You didn’t want to know,” Penny says, flat.

Quentin blinks, then says, “No, you’re right, I didn’t. You were the wrong Penny,” and there’s a disorienting moment when Penny sees - not himself, but the other Penny staring back at him through Quentin’s memory - sitting in a field somewhere, bandages on his wrists and empty space where his hands should be, his face drawn with grief - “and I -” Quentin looks away, “- I didn’t want to know any more about the universe where I was the monster who killed Alice. I’m sorry.”

“Whatever, the point is - when I saw Julia again, your Julia - standing there at Brakebills, _alive_ \- it was the best fucking moment of my life. Even once I knew she wasn’t my Julia, that she didn’t really know me, that she doesn’t - love me, it was still - ” 

Penny lets his head drop, closes his eyes. “And I fucked it up with her, I know that I - I know she’s not a fucking damsel, I know she doesn’t need me to save her, trust me, I _know_. Julia is - she’s the one saving me, okay? I was drowning, a hundred feet down, and she pulled me up. I just don’t know how to - every time I think about something happening to her -” It’s not fair to treat Julia like his own personal life raft, he really does fucking know that, but he doesn’t know how to _stop_. 

He looks at Quentin again. “You don’t think it was worth it - bringing you back.”

Quentin’s shoulders jerk, and he looks down, says, “Well, the Neitherlands are fucked to the nines, along with all the worlds connected to them if the fountains flood, the McAllistairs are trying to murder us again, Eliot lost his fucking voice - and the one time I actually thought that I - I did something right for once, turns out I maybe created a leak in the fucking Seam between the universe and the anti-verse -”

“No, see, that’s all just shitty icing on the shit cake,” Penny says. “You didn’t think it was worth it even before we knew about all that.”

Quentin doesn’t say anything, just stares down at his hands lying still and empty in his lap. 

“But you’re wrong,” Penny says. “The people who love you? They don’t give a shit about your big fucking hero act, about whether you saved the world or fucked it up. They definitely don’t care if you’re kind of fucked up right now - I mean, shit, who isn’t? It doesn’t matter. You were worth it.” 

Quentin swallows, his throat working, and Penny adds, “Hell, you coming back - it makes at least the top fifty of _my_ best moments, and I don’t even like you that much.”

Quentin whips his head around, and they stare at each other for a second - and then Quentin cracks up, bending forward and laughing helplessly even though his eyes are still wet, and Penny grins at him. (The swamp is less suffocating now, its pull less inexorable - maybe it’s just a pond, a lake that they can both float on top of -)

“So have a little fucking faith - talk to your people,” Penny says. “Deal with your shit, Coldwater.”

Quentin sniffs, still snickering, and then shakes his head, wipes at his face. “Yeah, and what about you? Have you told Julia all that stuff you just told me?”

“Telling Julia my sob story isn’t going to fix things between us,” Penny says.

“It might not fix things,” Quentin says, shrugging. “But I think you should tell her anyway.” He tilts his head mockingly - the effect would be better if he weren’t still all blotchy and nasal from crying. “Deal with your shit, Adiyodi.” 

Penny snorts, then says, “Not gonna lie, I’m a little impressed that you pronounced that right.”

“The other Penny gave me crap for getting it wrong at his wake,” Quentin says, and then they’re both laughing like idiots again.

The sun’s almost disappeared below the horizon. The air’s getting colder, and Penny rubs at his arms, fights back a shiver. 

Quentin looks at him, then gets to his feet and walks over to where the tequila bottle is still stuck in its ouroboros of destruction and renewal. He lifts his hand, casts a spell - the pieces fly together, clinking softly, and the bottle settles back into place on the ground, whole. 

*

“I don’t know what you want from me,” Julia says, crossing her arms. “Alice sent someone from the Library to explain about the fountains -”

“Yes, she sent someone rather than coming herself, I assume to avoid any uncomfortable questions,” Fogg says. “Questions such as, what the high holy _fuck_ have you people done this time?”

They’re standing on the path halfway between the Cottage and the main campus, in the shadow of a copse of trees, the tall boughs curving above them. The light and noise of the party at the Cottage seem very far away. 

“We haven’t done anything,” Julia says. “Whatever’s happening in the Neitherlands has nothing to do with the spell we did -”

“Look at me and tell me that you are one hundred percent certain of that fact,” Fogg says.

Julia stares at the muddy ground, and Fogg sighs. “Ms. Wicker - Julia -”

Julia takes a deep breath. “I appreciate what you’ve done for us, I really do - I believe that you were trying to protect us with the whole magical amnesia thing, and you helped us fight against the Library, you let me and Penny stay here even though we barely qualify as students anymore - you gave me enough time to get Q back -”

“But you don’t trust me,” Fogg says.

Julia says, “Irene McAllistair was here today.”

Fogg looks at her for a long moment, and then says, “Yes, she was.”

“You two seemed pretty cosy.”

Fogg smiles at her, sharp. “With all the trouble there’s been between the Library and the hedges, it’s easy to forget about them, isn’t it?”

“Forget about who?” Julia says.

“The magicians,” Fogg says. “Classically trained, rich, powerful, scattered across the world, all those smart, accomplished people who believed that the world was their oyster - only to find out that their magic can be taken away with the blink of an eye, or the turn of a wrench. Only for it to return just as quickly, but held hostage by strange magicians who run a Library on another world that most of them didn’t even know existed.”

“The Library doesn’t control magic anymore, it’s free again -” Julia says.

“Oh, yes, magic is free again, and increasing by leaps and bounds in a very concerning fashion,” Fogg says. “And the hedges, who used to scurry around on the margins, fighting over scraps, suddenly have a voice in the form of the Forum and obvious influence with the supposedly rehabilitated Library. Now the McAllistairs - who claim to have restored magic, who definitely retained magic even when everyone else had lost it - they’ve taken on a leadership role, you might say, for all those magicians who don’t understand how everything has spun out of their control quite so decisively.”

“They want to be on top again,” Julia says. “They want control back.”

“Yes, they do,” Fogg says. “The ambient is still rising, and the hedges are negotiating for access to the Library’s resources; and now random portals are appearing in their homes and their childrens’ schools, and once again the Library is to blame - and if the McAllistairs promise them a solution, promise to bring order to this chaos -”

“Right,” Julia says. “So you have tea and cookies with Irene McAllistair, so that you have an in if things go completely fucking sideways.”

“I’m not going to burn my bridges while the water is rising, Ms. Wicker,” Fogg says. “But I can promise you that my allegiance is always to Brakebills, and to my students - which includes you.”

Julia smiles crookedly. “I’d feel better about that if I didn’t know that your allegiance to Brakebills is what made you make a deal with the Library in the first place.”

“We had two more portals appear this evening, did you know that?” Fogg says. “The first portal spewed forth a number of animals, some of which we captured, but others fled into the woods. One student swears that a reindeer stole his Snickers bar and then flew off into the sky.”

Julia feels her eyebrows shoot up as she tries to hold in a laugh, but then Fogg continues, his voice quiet, “The second portal opened up near the greenhouses, and a student walked through it and vanished.”

“Shit,” Julia whispers. 

“Her boyfriend was inside the greenhouse - he said that he heard music coming from the portal, drawing him closer, but it closed before he could reach it. The student who disappeared - her name was Annette Lee. She was twenty-three, a Naturalist student, and I had to call her parents tonight to tell them that their daughter is gone.”

Julia chews on her lip, looks away towards the main campus - and so she sees it right away when it happens: a bright, flaring light rising up from the forest nearby, followed by a series of crashing noises - and then the screaming.

“Fuck,” Fogg says wearily, and takes off running towards the noise. 

Julia follows him, moving as fast as she can on the slippery path.

There’s a girl standing in front of the Naturalists’ treehouse - standing and screaming and staring _up_ \- 

Julia looks up at the treehouse and sees the body. 

She stops in her tracks, but Fogg keeps moving - he grabs the nearest student by the shoulder and snarls, “Tell me what the hell happened here.”

The student looks at Fogg, his eyes so wide behind his glasses that the whites are showing all the way around, and says, “She killed him.” He points - not to the screaming girl, but to a girl kneeling on the ground, tears running silently down her face as she stares up at the dead boy lashed to the tree, his body pierced through with dozens of vines, his blood dripping on the ground.

Julia shudders, looks away - and sees another boy half-sprawled on the ground, trying dazedly to push himself up, his face, chest, and hands burned and bloody.

Lipson comes running into the clearing, followed by two of the nurses, and Julia points at the boy on the ground. “Hey, he needs help -” Her voice comes out harsh and croaky, but Lipson takes one look at the boy impaled on the tree and gives her a nod, heads for the burned boy instead. The boy on the tree is past helping.

“Nico and Ethan got into a fight,” the student with the glasses says. “About Annette, about - Nico said Annette didn’t walk into the portal, he said Ethan pushed her through because he was jealous, because they danced together at the Cottage - and Ethan went crazy, he hit him with a fireball -”

Julia’s hands are shaking. She takes a step back.

“And Liv -” the student with the glasses looks at the kneeling girl. “When Nico got hurt, she just - she didn’t even do a spell. She didn’t even - she was just bleeding magic, but like, going full Carrie-at-the-prom, and the vines -” 

The screaming girl abruptly stops screaming and sits down on the ground. She says, calmly and clearly, her voice devoid of emotion, “Ethan’s dead, isn’t he?”

No one says anything, and then Fogg says, “Yes, dear, he is.” He looks at Julia, and Julia turns around and walks out of the clearing, walks back down the path towards the Cottage as fast as she can. She’s not a healer, sure as fuck not a goddess anymore, there’s nothing she can do here - and it’s not as if the portals caused this, not directly anyway, they don’t even know for sure what’s responsible for, _who’s_ responsible for -

She makes it all the way back to the Cottage like that, running through all her perfectly rational excuses in her head, until she’s standing in her room and her hands are still shaking, and she can still see the blood drip-drip-dripping into the snow (the blood all over the floor of Kady’s apartment) when she closes her eyes.

“Fuck,” Julia says, “fuck, fuck, fuck -” and she covers her face with her hands, grinds the heels of her palms against her eye sockets -

There’s a knock on the door. “Jules? Are you there?”

It’s Quentin’s voice, and Julia drops her hands, goes to the door, opens it.

Quentin’s waiting in the hall. He’s staring at the floor, his hands fidgeting nervously with the hem of his sweater, and his eyes are red and he smells like tequila, and Julia has to lean against the door to brace against the wave of relief that nearly bowls her over. Q is alright - drunk, upset - but ( _alive_ ) basically fine, and standing outside her door.

“Hey,” Quentin says. “I - can we -” 

He darts a quick look in her direction, and then stares at her, frowning, his shoulders uncurling from their defensive hunch. 

“Jules, are you okay?”

She hides her hands behind her back, opens her mouth to say ‘yes’, but her chin is trembling, her throat so tight that she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to squeeze out a single sound. She presses her hand to her mouth, takes a deep breath. 

“Um, no,” Julia says. “You?”

“No,” Quentin says, his voice shaky, and then tries to smile at her, like it doesn’t matter, like what else is new -

Julia reaches for his hand, pulls him through the doorway and into her arms.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mention of suicide: Mostly an implication - Hyman says that Penny can get to Quentin in the bathroom without knocking the door down first, and Penny asks if they're at the knocking-the-door down stage already. Hyman says no.  
> Also vaguely implied in Penny's despair after his Julia died, and in Penny saying that Quentin doesn't think it was worth it to bring him back from the dead.
> 
> The movie with the horse disappearing into the swamp is _The Neverending Story_.
> 
> Carrie-at-the-prom is a reference to the movie _Carrie_.


	14. The Best Policy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She stops, nailing Julia with an iron stare, a High King stare. “This is fucked up, you know that, right? This is fucked up, and it is actively fucking us up, because Quentin is dead and gone and the longer we spend trying to bring him back and failing, the harder it gets to actually deal with it.”
> 
> Julia takes a breath. Counts - _1, 2, 3_ ; lets it out. “I’m not giving up yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mention of suicide in this chapter - please see the end notes for a full description.

“The Library doesn’t exactly embrace change, if you know what I mean,” Alice says. “People here are pretty set in their ways.”

Marina stares at her blankly.

“The prescribed punishments for things like, oh - stealing? They’re practically medieval,” Alice says. “But we don’t do that kind of thing anymore - much.”

Marina sighs, drums her fingers against the arms of the chair that she’s strapped to, her eyes sliding away from Alice to the door behind her.

Alice tilts her head. “Am I boring you?” 

Marina’s gaze snaps back to hers. “Oh honey, no, never - come on, tell me some more about how much trouble I’m in.” She leans forward, her voice going low, her mouth softening into a pout. “Am I a bad girl? Are you gonna put me over your knee?”

“Tell me about the book,” Alice says. “The one you so embarrassingly failed to steal.”

“Shit, aren’t we done with this yet? You must have figured it out by now,” Marina says. “I’m not telling you fuck-all, and you’ve got nothing with enough mojo to _make_ me. So puh- _lease_ let’s talk about something more interesting - you and Kady, for example, how does that work? Ooh, let me guess, you’re the headmistress and she’s the naughty student? I know how good she is at -”

“I know whose book it is,” Alice says. (Lie. But she wants to see what Marina says. (And okay, also distract her from her current topic.)) “I just want to know why you want it.”

Marina’s fingers go still on the arms of the chair. Then her eyes narrow and she says, “Really. Go ahead and tell me all about it then, share the deets.”

Alice doesn’t say anything, and Marina sighs again, rolls her shoulders and twists her head to crack her neck. “You know nothing, Alice Quinn. None of the stupid books are working, so you monochromatic assholes aren’t a chapter ahead anymore -”

“Who told you that?”

Marina smiles, thin and derisive; she looks pale, almost haggard, with her lipstick worn off and the scratches left by swan-Alice standing out harshly on her face. “Hmm, on the other hand, you’ve got that tight-laced, pseudo-Victorian ice queen thing going on, all that pent-up - frustration. Maybe you’re the one on your knees asking for a spanking and a gold star - though if that’s the case, I’ve gotta say, you still seem pretty tense - Kady must not be putting in the work -”

“Say Kady’s name one more time and I’m going to drag you out of this cell and use your own spell to turn you halfway into a swan,” Alice says. She holds up the small carved stone. “Not all the way, just halfway. With your bones in the wrong shape and feathers spearing your skin and your teeth melting into a beak -”

Alice stops. She’s gripping the stone so tightly she can feel its edges biting into the soft meat of her palm. 

Marina stares at her, then says, “You’d actually do it, wouldn’t you? Enjoy it, even.” She licks her lips. “They say it’s always the quiet ones.”

Alice shoves her chair back as she stands up, the metal legs screeching across the floor - then she spins around, heads for the door.

“Leaving so soon? Things were just starting to get interesting,” Marina calls after her.

Alice pauses with her hand on the doorknob. “Actually - I did have one more question. Why swans?”

“What?” Marina says.

Alice turns to look at her, gestures with the hand holding the stone. “This is the Brakebills South goose spell with a few fancy modifications tossed on top, I recognized it right away. But why bother changing it from geese to swans? What was the point?”

“Fuck if I know,” Marina says, shrugging. “I wasn’t the one who modified it. Maybe he just likes swans.”

Alice freezes. “Maybe who just likes swans?”

Marina looks at her, says nothing. Her hands have gone tight on the arms of the chair; a muscle jumps in her cheek.

“Right,” Alice says quietly. “I’ll be back later,” and she opens the door and leaves the room. Marina doesn’t call out after her this time.

She closes the door behind her, resets the wards, then looks at Kady, sitting with her feet propped up on the desk outside the cell and the viewing mirror in her lap. 

“Huh,” Kady says. “Well, that’s something, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Alice says. “That really clarifies things - swans.” She reaches into the pocket of her dress and removes the small spotted salamander that’s nestled there. “Thanks for letting me borrow it. It was worth a try.”

She hands the salamander back over to Kady, who gets up from the desk to take it from her with careful hands and put it back in its traveling container. 

“There you go,” Kady says to the salamander, her voice soft, and Alice looks away, wipes her hands on her dress, and then remembers - “Here, you need the ring back too -” 

She starts to twist the onyx ring off of her finger, the twin to the one that Kady’s wearing - Kady had brought the rings along with the salamander, as a counter to its radius of magical, compulsory truthfulness. Compulsory for everyone except Marina, apparently - one more thing to add to the list of failures, along with truth serums, interrogation spells, and the Library’s best psychics. 

“You can keep it on for now - uh, if you want,” Kady says, her eyes shifting down to the salamander in its box. 

“Oh,” Alice says. “Sure.” She drops her hand away from the ring, shifts on her feet. Kady’s still looking down at the salamander, and Alice wants - to step closer, to _make_ Kady look at her - 

“She’s scared,” Kady says, then clears her throat. “Marina, I mean. She’s trying to hide it, but - she’s scared of something, and I don’t think it’s the Library.”

“No, not the Library,” Alice says. “Someone else. I think someone sent her here to steal that book, and put a geas on her to keep her from telling anyone about it - I’m honestly not sure she could talk to us even if she wanted to.” 

Kady blows out a breath. “Must be a fucking powerful someone.”

“I’ll cross-index swans with everything else I’m looking at, but as clues go, it’s not exactly breaking the case wide open,” Alice says. “And I don’t even have time to deal with this right now, because it’s still fucking _raining_ out there -” 

She leans against the wall, closing her eyes and letting her head thunk back lightly. She’s still holding the swan spell stone, and she rotates it in her hand, rubs her fingertips against the carvings, before dropping it back into her pocket. “I wasn’t really going to do it. Turn her halfway into a swan.”

She keeps her eyes closed, feels herself tense, waiting for Kady to - (What? Say she believes her? Call bullshit? Is it even bullshit? Fuck if Alice knows - maybe she should take the ring off, try saying it again - maybe the fucking salamander can tell her exactly where her line is, exactly how far she’d go -)

But Kady only says, “You don’t have to - defend my honor to Marina, you know,” and Alice opens her eyes to look at her in surprise.

Kady shrugs, gives her a half-smile. “Not that there’s any left to defend -”

“Yes, there _is_ ,” Alice says, straightening up from the wall.

Kady looks at her, wide-eyed, before her expression closes up like a locked vault. “You don’t know what I -”

“Ask me if I give a shit,” Alice says. “I know you - and you’ve got plenty of fucking honor, honor up to your eyeballs, okay?”

Kady stares at her for a long moment, and then her mouth twitches. “All the way up to my eyeballs?”

“Oh, shut up,” Alice says, flopping back against the wall, trying to not smile, but Kady says, “No, no, that was smooth, that was like, practically poetry, I swear I’m going weak in the knees over here -” and sidles up close until they’re standing side by side against the wall, arms pressed together from shoulder to elbow.

Alice lets herself relax into Kady’s warmth, thinks about - dancing together, Kady’s hands tight on Alice’s hips, pulling her closer -

“So are you done trying to _Casablanca_ me?” Alice says.

“I - what? I’m not trying to -” Kady says.

Alice looks at her sideways. “Because Q’s not my fucking husband escaped from a prison camp, and you don’t have to shove me on the last plane out of town because you think I’ll regret it forever if I stay -”

“Okay, okay, enough, I get it,” Kady says. She stares down at the floor, kicks the toe of her boot against the concrete, then says, quiet: “You love him.”

“Yeah,” Alice says, and blinks hard for a second to clear her suddenly blurry vision. “He’s - he’s the first person I ever loved, that’s not going to change or go away.”

“And he came back from the fucking dead, you got him _back_ ,” Kady says. “I don’t understand why you’d - if it’s just because you’re mad at him right now -”

“I am still mad at him,” Alice says. “But that’s only part of why -” She shakes her head, she’s not sure how to - “When we were together, me and Q - so much shit went down, obviously, we hurt each other so badly, but the thing is - even when things were good, when we were good? It was - a lot of work. All the time, for both of us.”

She takes a deep breath. “It’s not like that with you.” 

Kady’s gone still next to her. 

Alice says, “And maybe it would be different this time - we’ve changed, we’re not the same people anymore, maybe it would be better - or maybe it wouldn’t. I don’t know, I just -”

“It’s only been a couple of months,” Kady says, and kicks at the floor again, harder this time. “Maybe it’s easier with me because you haven’t gotten the chance to see how much of a total bitch I am yet.”

“Sure,” Alice says, “or maybe all the ways that you’re a bitch fit with all the ways I am, who knows?” (You like me when I’m angry, is what she means; you bring me my favorite snacks on the days when I want to tear the world apart, or myself apart, but you never look at me like you think I need saving. You don’t wilt when I’m mean, you start fights instead of sulking, you bite without me having to ask -) “Jesus Christ, I’m not asking for declarations of eternal fucking devotion, I just don’t want to _stop_.”

Kady crosses her arms, doesn’t say anything, and Alice - 

Alice steps away from the wall, yanks the onyx ring off of her finger and slams it down on the desk. Kady jumps in surprise, finally looking up from the floor. 

Alice turns to face her, stands next to the salamander’s box with her arms stretched out wide, her hands bare. “I want you. I want to keep seeing you, and fucking you, and arguing about Library loans and independent hedge schools and which fucking take-out place does the best burritos -” 

Kady’s gaping at her, and Alice’s face is flushing hot, but she makes herself finish, “And if you’re done, if you want to break it off because this was a - a good distraction, and now it’s too complicated, it’s too much, _I’m_ too much - then just fucking say it.”

Kady says, “That’s not -” 

“But you don’t get to pretend like you’re doing it on my behalf, that it’s what I want,” Alice says. “I know what I want.”

Kady stares at her, swallowing, something raw and uncertain in her eyes - and then Sheila leans out from around the corner at the far end of hall, says, “Alice, we’re ready to try the shield spell over the fountains, you said you wanted -” Sheila stops, looking back and forth between the two of them. “Or are you - uh, busy?”

Alice picks the ring up off the desk. “No, it’s nothing. I’ll be right there,” she says, and shoves the ring into Kady’s hand. “Here.”

Kady’s fingers close around the ring, brushing against Alice’s, but she doesn’t say anything, and Alice turns away, follows Sheila down the hallway without looking back.

*

They end up on Julia’s bed, lying on their backs on top of the covers, staring up at the ceiling. 

Julia’s holding his hand. She smells like cigarettes and damp night air and Julia, and her hand is warm and familiar in his. 

“Do you think I’m Captain Ahab?” Julia says.

Quentin rolls his head to look at her, then says, “This is probably the wrong time for a dick joke, isn’t it?” 

Julia snorts with laughter, jostling him with her pointy elbow. “Shut the fuck up -”

“There’s just so many options, between the title, and you know - that it’s a sperm whale -”

“I will push you off this bed, jackass,” Julia says, elbowing him again.

“Sorry, I’m still drunk,” Quentin says. “I blame the demon drink.”

“Drink more water,” Julia says, and Quentin obediently sits up, takes a deep gulp from the glass of water on the nightstand. When he lies back down, Julia tucks herself back against him, and he thinks: if you were dead, you’d never have gotten to have this again - and has to close his eyes, breathe deeply for a couple of seconds.

“I’m serious,” Julia says. “Kady said - do I chase after my fucking whales, and drag everyone else into the whirlpool along with me?”

“No,” Quentin says, after a moment. “You’re not Captain Ahab.”

“But you had to think about it.”

Quentin’s the one doing the elbowing this time. “Ahab didn’t care about his crew, he didn’t care if they lived or died as long as he got what he wanted. That’s not you.”

“Sometimes I push, though - sometimes I take risks -” Julia says.

“Yeah, but sometimes you have to take risks,” Quentin says. “You keep going, you don’t give up, you demand the impossible - and the last impossible thing you did was bring me back from the dead, so if you want someone to give you crap about it, you’re asking the wrong guy.” 

Julia’s hand tightens on the sleeve of his sweater. “Yeah. That’s why I’m not - I’m not sorry, about any of it, even though that probably makes me a shitty person.”

“You’re not a shitty person. You couldn’t have known what would -” Quentin says. There’s something rising up in his throat, and he says it fast, before it can choke him. “You saved me. You brought me back - and everything’s fucked up now because of me, and I’m sorry -” 

“It’s not -” 

“ - I’m sorry I’m such a fucking mess, I know I should be happy -” 

“Q, no, Jesus fucking Christ -” Julia rolls towards him, throwing her arm across him in a clinging sideways hug, whispers fiercely into the side of his neck, “You don’t have to be happy, you can be a mess, you can be fucking anything -” 

He’s too tired to cry anymore - he feels flattened, exhausted, like a wrung-out dish-cloth - but his eyes are stinging with tears again, so he closes them, turns his head to press his face against Julia’s hair.

“I’m grateful, I’m so fucking grateful, I really am - even though I’m not fucking - leaping through the streets yelling ‘Merry Christmas, Bedford Falls’, I want you to know that I’m - I want to you understand -” Quentin sucks in a breath, tries to figure out how to - “When I was in the Underworld, when I knew I was - done -” 

But he can’t fucking do it, he can’t say it, can’t talk about standing in that elevator as the doors slid open and seeing Penny, their Penny, waiting for him, and looking at him so fucking _kindly_ \- and then Julia’s tear-streaked face lit by firelight, that bonfire circle of people who love him - he can’t talk about it. 

Instead he says, “Jules. I don’t want to run away anymore. I don’t want to escape, I just want to _be here_ \- ”

Julia clings tighter. “So be here -”

“But now I’m - me again,” Quentin says. “I’m back in my own fucked-up brain, and I can’t - I know it, but I can’t _feel_ it. What if I can’t remember -”

“You’ll remember,” Julia says.

He wants to believe that. If he told Julia about - all of it - 

(Brian had tried to get away at first, had punched the Monster in the face and tried to run; The Monster had laughed the first two times, had said “I found you,” when he appeared in front of him. 

The third time he had grabbed Brian by the throat and pinned him to the wall, choked him until black spots were blurring out his vision, his heels drumming uselessly against the brick. “This was a fun game, but it’s getting boring. Let’s stop playing now,” the Monster had said. 

Brian had nodded frantically, and the Monster had dropped him onto the ground. He’d lain there gasping and gasping, heart pounding in his ears, acid taste of coffee mixed with bile in his mouth, flat on his face on the grimy pavement, until the Monster had said, “Let’s go,” and Brian had gotten up and followed him, had learned the first rule of this new game: do what he says and maybe he won’t kill you, won’t strangle you or slice open your neck or tear a hole in your chest or or or - don’t run, don’t scream or cry when he murders someone in front of you, don’t flinch away when he touches you - 

Quentin thinks Julia would understand the hideous unfairness of it, that even with the Monster gone and the last fragments of Brian long since faded away, even months and one death plus one fucking resurrection later, Quentin’s still carrying Brian’s fear around in his body.)

(The other part though - the moment when Everett had said, “Your friend Eliot is safe,” and Quentin - a brilliant clarity had cut through the heavy pall that had been dragging at him, that had been pulling him down like a riptide. He had thought of the broken mirror behind him (had thought of everything he’s ever broken: _planes ashtrays relationships gods all of magic his dad Julia Alice Eliot -_ ).

He had thought: Eliot is safe. 

The Librarian in front of him, the mirror behind him, and the Monster, trapped in the bottle in his hand, but not for long.

All I have to do is fix this one thing.

He doesn’t know how to tell Julia about it, because he’s still not sure what was at the heart of that clarity, in that moment, self-sacrifice or self-destruction. Maybe he’ll never be sure.)

Quentin says, “I might - I think I might need some help. With that.”

“Then we’ll get you help,” Julia says, flat, determined. “There’s got be some therapist-magicians out there, it’s not like they’d ever be short of work.”

Quentin huffs out a watery laugh, and Julia continues, a smile in her voice, “Shit, sign me up too, sign everybody up, maybe we can get a discount. Is there Groupon for magicians?”

“Sure, let’s do it,” Quentin says. “You know, assuming the world doesn’t end when the fountains in the Neitherlands flood.”

“Assuming the world doesn’t end, I’m holding you to that,” Julia says.

It’s quiet for a while, the only sound the wind blowing against the windows outside, and Quentin feels himself drifting. He says, already half-asleep, “It’s too bad I didn’t come back with super-powers.”

Julia snorfles, shifting so that her head is resting on his shoulder. “Quentin the White, instead of Quentin the Grey?”

“Right?” Quentin says. “Or at least with a cool streak in my hair.”

Julia shakes with quiet laughter, and Quentin falls asleep.

He wakes up to a headache and a roiling stomach, stumbles out of the bed to head for the bathroom, leaving Julia still sleeping soundly.

In the bathroom, he doesn't look at the mirror. He drinks handfuls of water from the tap and doesn’t throw up, which is nice, then heads downstairs to scrounge through the kitchen for the stash of hangover tea that someone had stolen from the Naturalists.

Alice is sitting at the table in the kitchen with her phone in her hands and a steaming cup of coffee in front of her. She looks tired and discouraged, and she’s still wearing the gray Librarian dress from last night.

“Hi,” Quentin says.

Alice looks up from the phone, her eyes going wide for a second before she settles her face into a more neutral expression. “Hi. Um, there’s coffee.”

“I’m making hangover tea,” Quentin says, and pulls open the cupboard door to start poking through the shelves. It’s - been a while, really, since he’s lived in the Cottage, and nothing looks familiar. He opens the next cupboard, then the next.

“I came to give everyone an update,” Alice says. “But no one was awake yet, so I’ve been bouncing back and forth between the Library and - well, no one except Josh. We’ve been texting - he says he’s portal-lagged, he woke up at 6 am and started stress-baking in the kitchen in the first year dorms. He’s making a cake for Fen, he seems kind of - intense about it for some reason -”

Quentin finds the tea in a box at the back of the third cupboard; it’s a little dusty, but probably still good. He takes out a packet and puts in on the counter, fills a mug with water, does a spell to bring it to boiling point. 

He drops the tea bag in the mug; when he turns around, Alice is watching him.

“What?” Quentin says.

Alice blinks, says, “Everyone’s awake now over there, Fen and Margo and Eliot, they’re all coming over as soon as everyone’s ready and the cake is done.”

“Great,” Quentin says.

“We haven’t gotten anything useful out of Marina yet, except - I guess I can tell you later, when everyone’s here -”

Quentin turns away to get a spoon out of the cutlery drawer, then jabs at the tea bag, half-submerged in the mug.

He hears a soft click - Alice putting her phone down on the table. “Julia said - last night, Julia said that you saw me and Kady.”

Quentin stares down at his mug, the water slowly turning purple as the tea steeps. His head fucking hurts, and he really wishes that they could have had this conversation _after_ he’d drunk the tea and felt a little bit less like total shit. “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, I should have told you right away,” Alice says. “There was just - a lot going on, and I - I was -”

“It’s fine, it doesn’t matter -”

“Yes, it matters, it was shitty of me -”

“I was dead,” Quentin says. He still hasn’t turned around. He rests his hands on the counter, looks out the kitchen window at the dull rainy morning outside; his stomach has started churning again. “I mean, that pretty much - cancels out all obligations, you don’t owe me anything -”

“ _Q_ ,” Alice says, and her voice cracks, and _Jesus motherfucking shit_ \- how many times have they done this? How many times has Alice broken up with him, you’d think he’d be better at it by now, better at hearing how he just isn’t -

He turns around, crosses his arms. “What do you want me to say? I get it - I was dead, you moved on, I hope you’re very happy together -”

Alice stares at him, her mouth twisting down. “You have no idea what it was like for me when you -”

“Are you fucking kidding me? You think I don’t know what it’s like when - when someone you love dies?” 

Alice looks away, takes a deep breath. “Can we not - I don’t want to fight with you. I just wanted to tell you, face-to-face, and to let you know that I’m sorry.”

“Fine,” Quentin says, deflating. “Now I know.” He grabs the mug off the counter and scoops the tea bag out into the garbage, takes a drink and predictably scalds the shit out of his mouth. He takes another gulp anyway, feels the tight pressure at his temples start to fade away. 

“You know I love you,” Alice says, very quietly, and Quentin freezes. “You - when you died, I was - I wanted to die. I wanted to storm the Underworld and scream at you for hours and then pull you out and never, ever let you go. Then Penny told us it was too late -” She stops, swipes at her eyes under her glasses. Her phone buzzes on the table but she doesn’t look at it.

“Alice,” Quentin says, and then doesn’t know if he should - apologize, if he should - I came back, he wants to say.

“And then you came back,” Alice says, like she’d heard him. “We brought you back, Eliot brought you back, and I’m so -” She sniffs, then shakes her head, takes a drink of her coffee. Then she says, slowly, “You and Eliot -”

Quentin frowns. “What about Eliot?”

“You followed him out of the Underworld,” Alice says, looking down at the table.

“That was - that’s just how it works, how the story -” Quentin says, something tightening in his chest. “We’re not -”

Alice gives him a sharp, dubious look, and Quentin snaps, “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” (Q, come on. I love you, but - you have to know -)

Whatever she sees in his face must be convincing, because Alice drops her eyes, says, “Okay, fine, maybe I don’t, it’s none of my business anyway -”

“Exactly, it’s none of your business, because we’re done, right?” Quentin says.

Alice looks at him like - like _he’s_ the one breaking _her_ heart, and - (past-Alice, Alice at Brakebills South, in their first year, before - before everything, looking at him like he was - worth something, saying, “You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” and the fucking irony in that had burned like a brand, like a hot-coal demon ripping its way out of your back: Quentin, who’d cheated on her, gotten her killed, dragged her back kicking and screaming to a humanity so strange and awful that she’d hated him for it - and fuck, he was the one refusing to forgive her? He was the one sending her away, lecturing her about trust - god, he’s such a fucking hypocrite sometimes, Julia had called him smug once, sitting in an alley outside a bar and showing him the magic she could do while he shut her down, and he - he likes to think that he’s left that arrogance and petty dickishness behind, that he’s better than that now, but he’s _not_ -)

Quentin steps towards her, says, “Alice, I’m - I didn’t mean to leave you, to -”

There’s a loud bang and a clatter from the direction of the front door, and then Margo’s voice: “Alice, get in here! Who the fuck else is awake?”

They look at each other, surprised; and then Alice pushes her chair away from the table and hurries through the entrance to the main room, Quentin abandoning his mug on the counter before following her.

Margo is marching into the Cottage with a large black-and-white rabbit held tight in her arms, Fen and Josh trailing behind her; Eliot’s further back, still half-outside, standing in the open doorway.

“We’ve got a problem,” Margo says. “A whole big brand-fucking-new problem -”

“Because we were short on those,” Alice mutters.

Margo plops the rabbit down in the middle of the coffee table, and gestures wildly at it. The rabbit wiggles its nose, then says, “The children.”

“What -” Quentin starts, but Fen shushes him, scowling. 

“Fairies took them,” the rabbit says. “The children. Fairies took them.”

“Oh, what the fuck,” Quentin says.

“Yeah, nicely fucking put. So wake up Penny and Julia, then pack up your shit,” Margo says. “Because we’re catching the first flight out of here to Fillory.”

Once Quentin’s done shoving some clothes and any semi-useful magical shit he can find into his bag, he leaves the flurry of activity and arguments in the Cottage behind to go outside for a smoke; and finds Eliot already there, sprawled on a patio chair under the overhang, staring out at the rainy front lawn, the tents and other detritus of last night’s party still scattered across it.

“Oh, uh, hey,” Quentin says. 

Hey, Eliot says silently, then his hands finish moving through the spell and he says, _Ready to go?_

“Yeah, just -” Quentin says, and waves the cigarette in his hand. 

_Right_ , Eliot says.  
  
He’s staring up at Quentin with a weird look on his face, and Quentin shifts on his feet, says, “I was planning to quit, what with it being the second day of the rest of my life and all, but -”  
  
Eliot smiles at him. He’s pale in the dreary morning light, with dark shadows under his eyes, and Quentin says, “Are you okay? You look -”  
  
_I was up half the night with Margo and Fen, holding a Fillorian war council_ , Eliot says. _Although all our plans just got blasted to smithereens with this lovely new development, so -_ He shrugs. _Guess we’ll see what happens._  
  
“Yeah,” Quentin says. He sticks the cigarette in his mouth and lights it with a twist of his fingers, takes a drag and casts around desperately for something to say that’s not, so remember last night, when I made a fool of myself and then ran away? Can we just never talk about that again, toss it in with all the other shit we never talk about?  
  
_Did you try Josh’s cake?_ Eliot asks. _He said he’s trying to recreate old-god-cake, whatever that means._  
  
“Yeah, it was amazing,” Quentin says. “He keeps moaning about everything that’s wrong with it, but it’s already like an orgasm in your mouth -” He catches Eliot’s eye as he finishes his sentence, and shit, _shit_ , he’s fucking blushing like an idiot, like he’s in eighth fucking grade - he looks down at the ground, then realizes he can’t see what Eliot’s saying and aims his gaze in the general direction of Eliot’s chest instead.  
  
_Q, can we -_ Eliot says, and then the door of Cottage opens and a couple of bleary-eyed students stumble past them. Eliot makes a face and grabs his cane, maneuvering himself to his feet, and gestures at Quentin to follow him.  
  
Quentin sighs, takes another deep drag of his cigarette, and does. They walk around the Cottage to the side patio, which thankfully still has part of a tent roof stretched across it overhead, keeping it sheltered from the rain.  
  
Eliot turns to look at him, leaning his cane against the patio table and casting the pool of light spell again. Before he can say anything, Quentin blurts out, “If this is about last night, you don’t have to - it’s not a big deal.”  
  
Eliot blinks at him, then says, _It’s not_ not _about last night, but -_   
  
Quentin says, “It doesn’t have to be a whole - thing, is what I’m saying. Don’t worry, I know it was just the dance spell, I’m not - I know it didn’t mean anything.”  
  
He leans against the patio table, concentrates very hard on the arduous task of tapping his cigarette against the side of the ash-tray sitting there - and he’s not fucking looking at Eliot again, he’s going to have to work on his habit of avoiding eye contact during fraught conversations.  
  
He drags his eyes back over to Eliot, just in time to see the remains of glowing white words dropping down into the pool in Eliot’s hands. “Shit, sorry, I wasn’t looking, what did you say?”  
  
_Q_ , Eliot says, and there’s something - Eliot’s holding himself so still and stiffly, looking at him almost like he’s scared - _Q, it wasn’t just the spell._   
  
~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mention of suicide in this chapter: Quentin talks to Julia about his depression and about being afraid that he won't be able to remember what it was like to be dead, and to want to live. He also remembers the moment he decided to mend the mirror, and still isn't sure whether it was suicide or not.  
> Alice says that when Quentin died, she had wanted to die.
> 
> The chapter title comes from the saying, "Honesty is the best policy."
> 
> "You know nothing, Alice Quinn," is a reference to "You know nothing, Jon Snow," from _Game of Thrones_.
> 
> Captain Ahab is a character in the book _Moby-Dick_.
> 
> "Merry Christmas, Bedford Falls," is a reference to the movie _It's a Wonderful Life_.
> 
> "Quentin the White, instead of Quentin the Grey?" is a reference to _The Lord of the Rings_ \- and I'm worried that I actually read this exact joke before in someone else's fic, so if I did, my profuse apologies to you, and the satisfaction of knowing that your idea made such an impact that it sank into my brain and I couldn't remember if I made it up or not?
> 
> Alternate names for this chapter: "You Must Remember This" or "The Librarian, the Mirror and the Monster"


	15. Wound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She stops, nailing Julia with an iron stare, a High King stare. “This is fucked up, you know that, right? This is fucked up, and it is actively fucking us up, because Quentin is dead and gone and the longer we spend trying to bring him back and failing, the harder it gets to actually deal with it.”
> 
> Julia takes a breath. Counts - _1, 2, 3_ ; lets it out. “I’m not giving up yet.”

The rain is pattering down on the canvas stretched over their heads, and Eliot’s heart is beating rabbit-fast in his chest.

“What are you talking about?” Quentin says.

 _I’m talking about you and me_ , Eliot says, and fuck fuck fuck - he’d only gone over this moment a few million or so times in the Happy Place, had run through every possible scenario in his head, what he should say, the way he should - and then a couple million times more, in the last thirty-three hours since they got Quentin back, and now his brain’s a buzzing, fritzing blank, all his carefully prepared words swept off into oblivion.

“You and me,” Quentin says. He’s motionless, his hands fallen to his sides, his cigarette burning away between his fingers, forgotten.

 _I wanted to tell you -_ Eliot says, then starts again. _So, um, the funny thing about being trapped inside a mind prison for months is that it gives you a lot of time to think about your life, and - and your regrets, and in this case specifically -_

Quentin’s watching him, but Eliot has no idea how to read the expression on his face. _Specifically my regrets about you - about us. Together._

Quentin says nothing, doesn’t move, barely seems to be breathing, and Eliot swallows hard, takes a small step forward. _There was this - I had to find a door -_

“Look - is this a guilt thing?” Quentin says. 

_What?_ Eliot says.

Quentin finally moves, leaning forward to stub his cigarette out in the ash-tray with what seems like an unnecessary amount of force. “I know you feel bad about - what happened with the Monster, so if this is - if you think you have to -”

Eliot shakes his head and half-laughs, punchy with nerves, says, _Of course not, that’s -_

Quentin steps away from the table, then crosses his arms and shoots Eliot a look so hard and full of disbelief that Eliot flinches back from it. “Really? This isn’t - ‘poor little Q, he’s having a rough time, he’s on the rocks with Alice again, better step in to make sure that -’”

 _No_ , Eliot says, wishes he could yell it, _for fuck’s sake - no, that’s not what -_

“Because if it is - you really don’t have to take one for the team here, I’m okay -” Quentin ducks his head, says, “ or - I’m _going_ to be okay -”

 _It’s not a fucking guilt thing_ , Eliot says. _I’m trying to tell you -_

But Quentin’s not looking at him, he’s staring fixedly down at the patio stones; and then he says, “Do you want to know why I came back? Why I followed you?” He glances up at Eliot, waiting for an answer.

 _Yes_ , Eliot says. His hands ache from how tightly he’s pressing them together, holding them in place for the spell.

Quentin takes a deep breath, uncrosses his arms. He sticks his hands in his pockets instead and starts to turn away, then stops, visibly forces himself to keep looking at Eliot. 

“I wanted more,” Quentin says.

 _More?_ Eliot says.

“More singing,” Quentin says, and smiles at him sweet and teasing for a fraction of a second, there and gone, and Eliot’s knocked breathless with it, but Quentin keeps going. 

“More of you,” and then quickly, “more of all of it, just - all of it, even the boring parts, and the shitty parts. Even the parts that hurt.” His voice wavers, and he stops, clears his throat. “I wasn’t done, I wanted more.”

 _Oh_ , Eliot says, and blinks fast, looking up at the tent roof above them like maybe gravity can make the tears filling his eyes slide back into his face somehow. _That’s good, that’s -_

“And it’s, um - it’s harder now, to hold onto that,” Quentin says. “But I talked to Julia about it, we’re going to ask Fogg about what kind of help is out there, for magicians -” 

_Henry has a whole goddamn list, make him cough it up_ , Eliot says. _He tried to give it to me after - Mike, but I was pretty dedicated to my own self-prescribed chemical interventions._

“Thanks,” Quentin says. “I will. So - what I’m trying to say is, I’m gonna be okay. You don’t have to - to worry about lifting my spirits, or whatever -”

 _Q, I swear to fucking - to God, to the gods, to every fucking divine and/or semi-divine being out there: that is not what I’m doing_ , Eliot says.

But Quentin’s twisting his hands in his pockets, saying, “Things have been kind of crazy lately, what with the Monster, and me - um, being dead, and then in the Underworld, you - but that doesn’t mean - you shouldn’t feel like you have to - or that I expect anything from you -”

 _Okay, stop, stop_ , Eliot says. _This isn’t me offering a pity fuck, would you please just let me -_

“ - it’s not like at the mosaic, you’re not stuck with me -”

Eliot has very personal, very first-hand knowledge of what it feels like to get stabbed in the gut with the business end of a sharp axe, and oh, hey: it feels a little like this.

Eliot says, _I wasn’t stuck with you._

And the fucking look Quentin gives him: flatly skeptical, edging towards pissed off, like he thinks Eliot’s a liar and not a very good one (only half-true) - and Eliot - he’s imagined five million plus ways how this conversation might go, not just his half but Quentin’s too, what he would say, or do, everything from the best case - dragging Eliot into a passionate clinch - to the worst case - Quentin telling him to go fuck himself, he never wants to see Eliot again - to the bleakly mundane but extremely likely case - Quentin looking at him apologetically, saying, “Eliot, I’m with Alice,” saying, “It’s too late,” saying, “I think we should just be friends.”

Apparently the borders of his imagination hadn’t stretched far enough, because he’d never pictured this - that he could tell the truth, and Quentin wouldn’t believe him.

“Right, sure, you weren’t stuck with me,” Quentin says. “You were just stuck in the middle of the woods with me and our kid and that fucking puzzle, and an hour’s walk to the nearest town if you wanted to find someone _else_ to suck your dick.”

Shit. Shit fuck motherfucking Christ - Eliot’s fucked this up so much worse than he’d even - _It wasn’t like that. You - Hey. Hey!_

Quentin’s glaring down at the ground, his jaw working, not looking at him, deliberately not looking at him, and Eliot kicks the leg of the patio table, the toe of his boot thudding loud against the wood, until Quentin raises his head. 

_It wasn’t like that_ , Eliot says, and puts every single fucking ounce of conviction he’s got into it, because Quentin has to - he has to - _You_ know _it wasn’t like that._

Quentin stares at him, sullen, guarded - and then something shifts in his face, the anger sliding away; but he looks miserable instead, which isn’t any better - 

“I know it wasn’t like that,” Quentin says, quietly, and Eliot feels the tiniest bit of tension ebb from his shoulders, because _fuck_. 

“But I also know that after Arielle - after she died, I needed you so badly,” Quentin says. “And you were there, you were there for me, you were so good to me, and I get that you -” He breaks off, runs his hands through his hair in frustration. “This is so - I don’t know how to talk about this when it wasn’t even us, it didn’t even happen -”

 _It happened_ , Eliot says. 

A sickeningly cold ball of ice is sitting below his ribcage, growing bigger with each passing second, because this is - this is his fault, and he has to fix it. _Okay, I need you to listen. Or read, whatever. What I said to you, that day, after we remembered?_

Quentin looks at him, waiting, and - (Q sitting next to him in the throne room, the first time, the second-memory-time, Q standing on the wrong side of a pane of glass in the Underworld, lifting his hand up to Eliot’s - waiting for Eliot, waiting for Eliot to meet him halfway, waiting for Eliot _to be fucking brave -_ )

Eliot breathes in and out, and doesn’t run. 

_Q, I didn’t spend fifty fucking years essentially_ married _to you because I had no other choice, okay? And it wasn’t because of the quest, and it wasn’t because you needed me._

Quentin’s eyes are wide and dark. Eliot gulps for air, makes himself say it: _It was because I loved you. Because I was - in love with you. Because you made me happy._

Quentin stares. The words hang in the air, written in light, and then disappear. The silence stretches excruciatingly between them.

Then Quentin says, “You made me happy too,” and his voice is shaking apart. “But then why -”

 _Because I was - because I’m a_ liar - 

(and Eliot thinks, crazily, of secrets magic, of the Trials in first year, five years and a lifetime ago, the unspooling of internal circumstances, naked and whispering to Margo in the dark, “I pretend that I’m - special, that I’m this impressive fucking person - but I’m _not_ , I’m not anyone, I’m - if they knew who I really -”) 

_A liar, and a coward, and a phony, and - and a murderer_ , Eliot says. _And I’m always - waiting for the moment when people figure it out, figure me out, and leave._

“That’s not -” Quentin says thickly, then shakes his head, hard, just once, more like he’s trying to shake something loose than like he’s disagreeing. He opens his mouth, then closes it again without saying anything else.

 _I thought - you were the one stuck with me_ , Eliot says, and his throat is closing up, which is fucking ridiculous because he’s not even speaking out loud, but he still has to try to say the words for the spell to work. He swallows, grinds it out, _I was afraid that - I thought once you had time to - I thought that you would leave._

Quentin looks at him, and his face is - like he’s been sliced open, like Eliot’s cut him to the bone. “And it wasn’t worth the risk to even try?” ( _I_ wasn’t worth -)

Eliot’s got no answer to that, just stands there reeling, exposed, silent -

\- and the pile of empty beer bottles by the side door shatters, glass clattering across the patio stones, and they both jump.

“Fuck!” Quentin says, and turns away from Eliot towards the bottles, his hands already moving in a spell. “This is so _fucking -_ ” 

The broken glass flies into the air, the pieces fitting together, finding their original shapes - good as fucking new. Quentin drops his hands, then stands still for a several long seconds, his shoulders curled in, his head turned away. The ball of ice below Eliot’s ribcage is a block now, spreading through his limbs, every part of him cold and aching and weighed down.

Quentin turns back towards Eliot, folding his arms tightly over his chest. “So now you’ve just - changed your mind?” 

_No, now I’ve realized what a fucking idiot I was_ , Eliot says. _Q, I’m -_

He takes a step forward, careful to keep his weight on his good leg - and Quentin takes a step back. 

And, well - that’s his answer right there, isn’t it? Eliot tries to breathe normally, like his chest isn’t so tight and painful that he can barely - 

_You don’t have to say anything_ , Eliot says. _I’m not asking you for anything. I know I’m over a year late and about a million fucking dollars short, I just wanted - you should know, you deserved to know. That I lied. That you’re my_ first _choice_.

Quentin blinks hard, but says nothing - his mouth twisting, his gaze glued to the air above Eliot’s hands, refusing to lift any higher - 

The wind blows wildly, tosses a gust of icy rain under the overhang, and then the side door swings open, Margo standing pissed and impatient in the doorway. 

“Hey, it’s almost go-time, what the fuck are you two doing -” She stops dead when she sees their faces, steps out onto the patio. “What -”

Quentin drops his head and raises a hand to swipe quickly at his eyes. “Fillory, go-time, right - I’m ready, I’ll just - I’ll go get my stuff.” He heads straight for the door, darting around Margo, and vanishes into the Cottage. He doesn’t look at Eliot again.

“Tell me you didn’t,” Margo says.

Eliot takes two halting steps and sinks down onto the nearest patio chair. His side is aching, his bad leg burning from the effort of standing for so long without any support, and he’s starting to shake a little. 

“We are leaving for what’s basically a sparkly magical war zone in fifteen minutes, and you -”

 _Could you just fucking not?_ Eliot says. He bites down on his lower lip to stop its trembling, tastes blood. 

He hears Margo sigh, then the sound of her footsteps on the stones as she comes over to sit next to him. “Shit. I’m sorry. I really am. At least - now it’s out there, right? Maybe he’ll come around -”

 _No, don’t_ , Eliot says, shaking his head. _And don’t be sorry - because the truth is, I already had my chance, and I fucked it up. Sometimes you don’t get another one._

“I’m sorry anyway,” Margo says, and leans over to rest her head on his shoulder. “I guess it’s almost tradition now - is it even a real trip to Fillory if we don’t pre-game with some emotional upheaval and shitty interpersonal drama beforehand?” 

_I think I’d be fine with eschewing tradition in this case, actually_ , Eliot says. 

“Yeah,” Margo says. She lifts her head, looks at him sharply. “But real talk: we _are_ going to Fillory in T-minus fifteen, and it _is_ a fucking war zone, and El - I need you with me.”

 _You’ve got me_ , Eliot says. _I swear, Bambi, just - give me five minutes, and I’ll be waiting at the front door, ready to help you launch a fucking insurgency._

“Okay,” Margo says. “Thank you. I’ll see you in five,” and kisses him on the cheek before getting up and walking back through the side door, closing it behind her.

Eliot pulls his hands apart, the light dissolving into nothing as the subtitles spell breaks. He listens to the steady rhythm of the rain, stares at Quentin’s cigarette, still smoldering in the ash-tray. 

His hands are shaking, and the block of ice in his chest is cracking - he could leave, just leave, go back to the first year dorm room, find the emergency bottle of vodka in his dresser, drink - as much of it as he needs, drink half of it, drink all of it - Margo might even forgive him -

Or - he could get his fucking shit together and be someone Margo can count on, someone Fillory can count on, be someone - 

He has five minutes. Eliot leans forward, his elbows braced on the patio table, and buries his face in his hands.

It takes him six minutes, to be completely accurate, before he reaches the front door of the Cottage, stands in the open doorway as everyone else gathers around the dining table, checking bags and plans - (but he’d needed that extra minute to clean himself up, erase the evidence of a truly embarrassing ugly-cry -)

\- everyone else that is, except for Penny, who’s leaning against the wall of the Cottage like he’s holding it up, or it’s holding him up, head bowed and eyes heavy-lidded.

 _Rough night?_ Eliot says.

Penny gives him the finger without lifting his head.

 _Yeah_ , Eliot says, and watches Quentin and Alice have some kind of whisper-fight, as Alice tries to shove something into Quentin’s hand and Quentin backs away. 

“Would you just fucking take it?” Alice says, her voice rising, and drops a small carved stone onto the table next to Quentin’s bag. “For emergencies.”

Quentin scowls at her, and Alice spins away from him to look at Margo and Fen, says, “I’d go with you if I could, but -”

“It’s cool, we get it,” Margo says. “Can’t exactly play hooky from work when the fate of multiple worlds is hanging in the balance, if the fountain portals go from a little wonky to completely fucking FUBAR.”

Alice gives her a strained smile, says, “We’re working on it - also the Forum meeting is supposed to be today, so long as Kady’s managed to convince the hedges that the Library isn’t back-sliding into fascism -” She sighs, then says, “If you - if things go bad, let me know, send me a bunny, and I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

“Thank you, Alice,” Fen says. “Same on our end, okay?” and Alice nods at her and starts moving towards the door.

“Alice,” Quentin says, and she stops, looks at him. Quentin picks the stone up from the table, closes his fingers around it. “Thanks. And - take care of yourself.”

Alice’s face softens. “You too.”

Eliot moves aside to let her pass through the door, but she stops again to stare up at him, frowning. “Are you - okay?”

 _Just -_ peachy, he almost fucking says, and nearly chokes on his own spit trying to bite back the word, along with the semi-hysterical laughter that wants to slip out after it.

 _\- fine_ , Eliot says. _I’m just - I’m fine._

Behind Alice, Quentin meets his eyes for one endless second - then looks away, down at the stone that he’s turning over and over in his hand.

The sign on the witch’s front gate says: AWAY ON BUSINESS. TRESPASSERS WILL BE DISEMBOWELED AND THEIR CORPSES USED AS FERTILIZER.

“Jesus fuck,” Julia says.

“Fucking Fillory,” Penny mutters.

Eliot leans forward to get a closer look at the helpful drawing on the bottom part of the sign. There’s a lot of red ink splashed around.

“Points for precision and um, vivid imagery, I guess,” Fen says. “Nice use of pigment.”

“Gotta respect a woman who knows how to give a good graphic, anatomically-correct warning,” Margo says. She glances at Eliot. “This isn’t over, El.”

Eliot shrugs. Margo had been the one arguing for the gingerbread witch’s cottage to be the first stop on their trip, not him. _Fillory once again shooting all our plans off the rails? Color me shocked._

“She’ll be back,” Margo says, “and then we’ll be back with the bargaining power of the entire kingdom behind us, and we’ll get your fucking voice back.” She looks around at the forest surrounding them - the air is cool and damp, and getting colder as late afternoon turns swiftly to evening. “We should set up a tripwire spell, something that’ll tip us off when Ursula here gets home -”

Eliot takes a couple of steps sideways, away from the front gate, staring into the trees to find a good angle to set up the spell - and then ducks away as he feels something thunk against the back of his head. 

_Ow - the fuck?_

He stumbles a little, the cane tucked under his arm throwing off his balance, and then turns around to see what hit him: a pocket watch, hanging off the branch of one of the trees encircling the witch’s garden. 

No, not hanging off the branch, _growing_ off the branch - without thinking, he reaches up to grab it -

“Whoa, Eliot, dude - just an idea, but maybe we shouldn’t be stealing stuff from the Soylent-Green-is-fertilizer witch’s garden?” Josh says.

Eliot yanks his hand away, smooths his hair down nonchalantly instead, then moves his hands through the subtitles spell. 

_Wasn’t gonna_ , he says.

“Actually, it wouldn’t be stealing,” Fen says, pointing. “See? The tree’s growing on the other side of the fence, not in the garden, so as a wild plant in the Darkling Woods you’re free to forage its fruit according to Fillorian common law. Well, that is as long as the tree doesn’t take offense, which is a whole different legal issue -”

Margo looks at Fen sideways, spins the axe in her hand like she’s auditioning for color guard. “Wow - that’s exactly what I was about to say.”

“Is that a pocket watch?” Quentin says, and it’s the first thing he’s said directly to Eliot since - 

_Yeah, it’s -_ Eliot says, keeps his eyes straight ahead, fixed on the watch. _It’s growing from one of the clock trees._

Quentin steps closer, says, “That’s so weird, it looks almost exactly like Jane’s watch -”

Eliot risks a glance - Quentin’s right next to him, peering up at the watch, his eyes lit up - that familiar look of _wonder_ -

Eliot reaches up and plucks the watch off the branch, holds it out to Quentin. 

Quentin blinks at him in surprise, then takes the watch from Eliot’s hand and stares down at it. “The metal - it’s more coppery, less silver, and -” He sighs. “It’s not working.” He holds the watch up to his ear for second, shakes his head. 

“Too bad,” Julia says. “A cosmic-level time travel device would’ve really come in handy - although I guess we would still have needed the time key for it to work -”

 _Maybe this one doesn’t need the key, maybe the next generation comes with shiny new features_ , Eliot says, and then to Quentin: _Maybe you can fix it._

“I can’t even figure out how to open it,” Quentin says, grimacing, and tries to hand the watch back to Eliot. “Here -”

Eliot backs away, his hands still clasped together in the subtitles spell. _Keep it._

“No, it’s yours, you found it -”

_And I gave it to you, so now it’s yours -_

“You don’t have to -”

 _Just - fucking keep it. You missed Christmas, so there you go_ , Eliot says. _Have yourself a merry little Christmas. Better late than never, right?_

Quentin stares at him, his fingers curling tight around the watch.

Eliot says, _Fuck, sorry - I’m. I’m sorry._

“Hey, are we done here yet?” Penny calls out from where he’s sitting on a moss-covered stump, his head resting in his hands. “Can we fucking go already?”

“Yeah, yeah, cool your jets,” Margo says. “I’m almost - give me one goddamn second -” She’s squatting on the ground, in the middle of casting the tripwire spell with a small piece of glass anchored in a fallen tree.

Quentin is still staring - then he slides the watch into the pocket of his jacket. “Thank you,” he says softly.

Eliot opens his mouth - and then Julia says, “Penny? Penny, are you - shit, shit!”

He turns around just in time to see Penny take a header onto the forest floor, Julia trying and failing to keep him upright. 

“Hey, what the - is he -” Josh rushes over to help her, and between the two of them they manage to haul Penny into a sitting position.

Eliot lets the subtitles spell break and grabs his cane, hurries towards them as Penny shoves at their hands, says woozily, “I’m fine, I’m fine, quit it -”

Julia touches Penny’s forehead with the back of her hand. “He’s burning up. Penny, how long - oh fuck. Did you ever get that bite checked out?”

Penny smiles at her, says, “Julia! You’re worried about me, don’t be worried, I’m just a little, uh -” He tilts forward again, and Josh tugs him back.

“What bite?” Quentin says.

“Those fucking maenads -” Margo says, as Julia pulls down the collar of Penny’s shirt and lifts up the small white bandage on his chest. The skin around the bite is red and puffy, with red streaks starting to spread, and Julia looks up at the rest of them with wild eyes. 

“He can’t - he has to go to the infirmary,” Julia says. “Now.”

Margo chews on her lip for a second, then says, “Yeah. Okay, so new plan, we go back -”

“I’m not going back,” Fen says, and Josh jerks his head towards her, says, “You’re not staying here alone -”

“I am _finally -_ ” Fen starts, her voice half-way to a shout. She stops, takes a deep breath, and says evenly, “ - home. I’m finally home, and I am not fucking leaving.”

“If you’re staying, I’m staying,” Josh says.

Margo and Fen look at each other for a long, tense moment, before Margo huffs out an irritated sigh, slinging her axe over her shoulder and cocking her hip. “Well, fuck-a-doodle-doo, guess our _new_ new plan is that the rest of you go back and the three of us stay here and skip merrily along the yellow brick road - no, wait, trek through an endless forest and half of fucking Fillory to the fairy lands -”

 _The_ three _of you?_ Eliot says. _Is an excellent imitation of Alicia Silverstone as Cher Horowitz even necessary here?_

“He’s gonna be okay,” Quentin says; he’s kneeling next to Julia on the ground, his hand on her arm. “The infirmary will fix him up, they’ve dealt with way worse -”

“Sure, it’ll be fine, of course it’ll be fine,” Julia says, glancing over at him. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” 

“Yeah, she’s got this, Coldwater, you can fuck off,” Penny says, his voice muffled from where his face is pressed against Julia’s shoulder. 

“How about you shut up and try not to get taken out by the maenad equivalent of cat scratch fever?” Quentin says, but gives Penny’s arm an awkward pat before getting up and standing next to Margo. Josh lifts his arm away from Penny’s back and stands up as well.

“See you later,” Julia says, looking up at the rest of them. “And please stay safe - because we are fresh out of fucking dragon eggs.” She turns back to Penny, puts her hand under his chin to make him look at her. “Penny? Penny, we need to go back to Brakebills, to the infirmary, okay?”

“Brakebills?” Penny says, his face creased in confusion.

“Yes, Brakebills, take me to -” Julia says, and then they’re gone, and the five of them are standing alone in the forest as the evening shadows lengthen.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eliot giving Quentin the pocket watch is a reference to similar yet completely different events in _The Magicians_ books.
> 
> Quentin saying that he wanted more is very vaguely inspired by Prior Walter's speech from _Angels in America_.
> 
> "Ursula" is a reference to Disney's _The Little Mermaid_.
> 
> "Soylent Green-is-fertilizer" is a reference to the movie _Soylent Green_ and the famous line (spoiler alert): Soylent Green is people.
> 
> "Have yourself a merry little Christmas" is from the song - uh, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas".
> 
> "Alicia Silverstone as Cher Horowitz" is a reference to the movie _Clueless_ , specifically her line: "As if!"


End file.
